Santiago Restaurants

Santiago's restaurants offer from the cheapest meal in a napkin, the empanada, to upscale restaurants where delicately-prepared portions arrive on a giant expanse of white plate together with a set of cutlery fit for a king. Street food, like empanadas and the ubiquitous completo (hotdog with mayonnaise, tomatoes and avocado) rule the lower budget, while further along are hearty meat sandwiches like the chacarero (meat with stringbeans), or family favorites like pastel de choclo (like a shepherd's pie) and porotos granados (potage of beans, squash and ground corn). Tonier restaurants serve farther-caught food like tuna from Easter Island or king crab from the southern waters, or spit-roasted lamb from Patagonia. Food tends to follow the meat-starch-vegetable paradigm, where the vegetable is often potatoes. A fresh and occasionally spicy salsa called pebre is served alongside bread at the beginning of almost every meal. Chileans have long appreciated Peruvian food, and this specialty dominates the foreign-food trend, though sushi (occasionally with Peruvian sushi chefs) dominates of late, and is followed by a healthy set of middle-eastern restaurants and Thai food. Italian food is everywhere as well, but with varying degrees of quality. A set of very traditional restaurants which capitalize on the Chilean love of meat and the tendency to braise and then slow cook it abound, and fill up on Sunday afternoons for family get-togethers and days like Mother's day and Father's day.

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