The word of mouth on Santiago is not so good! The anecdotes range from “not my favorite” to “our friend got robbed at gunpoint while in her hostel.” Thus, while making our way to Patagonia, we limited our time in Santiago to roughly 30 hours, getting in very early Friday morning around 2 am and leaving early Saturday morning around 6 am. As you might expect, it was difficult to get a complete picture in such a short amount of time, but I did get the impression that Santiago might be getting dealt an unfair hand.
Bleary eyed from lack of sleep, we made our way to a Fix Coffee in Las Condes for a delicious Kyoto style cold brew. We then took a sunny 30 minute walk around the neighborhood en route to La Calma for lunch. La Calma was a recommendation from our friend Michael who saw it on ‘Somebody Feed Phil.’
It’s time for me to look past Phil’s objectively insane facial expressions and accept him as a fellow gourmand with a zest for life. His recommendations are consistently bangers (bangerz) including one of our very best meals in Bangkok. I need to stop punishing Phil Rosenthal for not being Anthony Bourdain.
La Calma was no exception in being another Phil approved gem. La Calma serves what Tiffany refers to as ‘Mermaid Food’.
Mermaid Food is when the ocean’s bounty hits your table with very little adulteration. What lays before you is a survey of the sea, ideally paired with a crisp white wine with some nice salinity. Chile has fantastic wine, with some of their vines dating back to the middle of the 16th century, when the good old US of A was but a twinkle in King George’s eye. For Mermaid Food, La Calma is the room where it happens.
What laid before us was Japanese oysters, clams, abalone (!), sea urchin, octopus, sea snails, scallops, and other less identifiable mollusks. We rounded this out with fresh tuna tataki, peas & mint, and a spicy limpet and abalone ceviche. Abalone is a very rare occasion in the States and basically a non-entity on the east coast so this was a treat and a half.
To pair with these oceanic delights we tucked into Casa Marin’s Sauvignon Blanc Cipreses. According to Casa Marin: “Considered the best Sauvignon Blanc in Chile and one of the best Sauvignon Blanc in the world. The grapes come from slopes of granite and limestone soils, exposed to the cold wind of the Humboldt current.” Okay!
After that we made our way to the Barrio Italia neighborhood to walk around and take in the 86 degrees and sunshine, a welcome uptick after Bogota’s chill.
For dinner we kicked off with wine at Lex Dix Vins and some French cheese. This felt like a fancy somewhat sterile place you might find in West Los Angeles or Soho, but it did the trick. We got into some delicious chardonnay and a cheese plate. We were the only ones in there, but it didn’t matter. Taking in the sunshine and the general sophisticated vibes was enough for us.
We then made our way to Bocanariz in Lastarria for dinner and a bit more of that Chilean wine. It was en route and arriving to Lastarria that we finally got a taste for what we had heard. The buildings were completely covered in graffiti. I don’t mean like a tag here and there. I mean, every inch of every building on every block from the moment we entered this area was covered in graffiti. This on its own wasn’t disconcerting, but it was paired with a heavy heavy presence of riot police with giant white trucks that looked like they were specially designed to plow through whatever lay before them.
It didn’t necessarily feel unsafe, but it felt like something had really gone down and could possibly go down again if the mood shifted. Inside at Bocanariz, it was posi-vibes only as we had a delicious meal and a bottle of Ventisquero Sauvignon Blanc to pair with some ceviche. I followed up with a glass of cinsault from the “rock whisperer” himself Pedro Parra. Note: I’ve been DM-ing with Pedro to see if we can visit him in Itata but he’s very slow to respond and looks to be about 90 minutes from where we will be staying in Bio Bio. Chile is BIG.
When we got picked up in a cab to head back to Las Condes, the cab driver mentioned, “I’m glad you are safe because people get robbed all the time where I picked you up.” We ask “late at night?” “No, people get robbed all the time,” he answered. Interesting…We continued to talk through his perspective on the current state of things in Santiago. While the situation in Chile is improving, it is clear the country is in a period of transition.
In October 2019, over 1.2 million people took to the streets of Santiago to protest against social inequality. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the raising of the metro rates, but rising inflation and inequality had been fomenting unrest for some time. Chile is considered one of the most developed countries in South America; it boasts one of the highest GDP per capita. However, costs were outstripping wages in ways that became untenable so people took to the streets in protest. Similar to what happens here in the US, there were conspiracy theories of agents from Venezuela and Cuba being driving forces in the protests, but no conclusive evidence was found. A Chilean later told us that the former Chilean president was a supporter of Maduro’s opponent and the working theory was that as a retaliation, Maduro sent agents of chaos to Santiago to drum up the protests.
One major result of the protests was an agreement made in November 2019 to draft a new constitution, but as of today no new constitution has been agreed upon, with the most recent draft rejected in September of 2022 by a margin of 62% to 38%. Throughout our time in Chile we’ve tried to talk with locals and gently coax out their perspective. Opinions vary from that people were being tricked into thinking that the new constitution represented communism and thus rejecting it to those who think that the new constitution wasn’t truly representative of Chile and hence needed to be rejected. From rising prices and inequality, there were many through lines between Chile and the US so it was super interesting to speak with people.
One thing that is inspiring is the politicians are much younger in Chile. Chile’s president Gabriel Boric (love to see Gabes winning) is only 37 and was a former student leader and constitutional agreement negotiator. The mayor of Viña del Mar, Macarena Ripamonti is only 31 while the mayor of Valparaiso, Jorge Sharp is only 38. I think one of the worst things about our body politic in the US is that many of our gerontocratic leaders don’t have an informed current perspective of what it is like some for someone to live and work in the US in 2023.
We clearly weren’t in Santiago long enough to get the full picture, but it felt representative of a country in transition and a place I wouldn’t mind visiting again. And as the jumping off point for our flight to the “fin del mundo” in Patagonia, our big adventure was just beginning. More on that in the next post!