The Best Places To Eat In Valparaiso

So as I no longer live in Valpo, I was thinking about the places I'll miss when I'm hungry.

1. Allegretto: Pilcomayo, just behind the Anglican Church, Cerro Concepcion. The best pizzas in town, friendly and welcoming staff and decor and open all the time. If you're ever hungry on a Sunday night, Allegretto is pretty much the only place open. It was always my go-to place whenever I was hungry and there was no food in the house.
2. Pastis: On the corner of Subida Concepcion and Pilcomayo, Cerro Concepcion. Duck to die for, amazing quiches, cute decor. Probably one of the best restaurants in Chile.
3. Mastodonte: Esmeralda, just down from Plaza Anibal Pinto. Best and cheapest lunches in town (2000 pesos for a well-presented and really good carne al jugo con arroz y ensalada chilena and a soft drink). Plus the decor is so unbelievably kitsch that you have to go check it out.
4. Le Filou de Montpellier: Great value French food, entertaining owner. Corner of Almte Montt and Urriola. It's never let me down.
5. Cafe Turri: Next to Ascensor Concepcion. Surprisingly good value and really pretty good food plus fantastic views.

I'll be back with more of my Valpo faves over the next few weeks. If you didn't know, I'm now living in Santa Cruz, Colchagua Valley, Chile, where I'm about to go to a two year old's birthday party after taking the dog for a long walk. Isn't life exciting?

The Two Best Restaurants In Chile...

...are not, in my opinion, in Santiago; they are in Valparaiso and Santa Cruz.

Here in Valparaiso, Pastis (corner of Subida Concepcion and Abtao) is, quite simply, fabulous. It has, without doubt, the finest duck breast (with duck-fat fried potatoes) I've had anywhere. The quiche starters are fantastic and the gazpacho is also really very fine (or so I've been told, as I don't like gazpacho myself). The desserts are pretty decent but not as good as the savoury food. 

Pastis is expensive by Chilean standards (including a cocktail, 3 courses and a bottle a wine to share, it comes to around 20-25,000 pesos per person) but for the quality of the food and the restaurant aesthetics, it's at least two or three times less than something similar in New York, Paris, London or any western city would set you back. The wine list is decent and well-priced. 

Seema (an old friend from home on a recent visit) modelling duck breast, duck fat fried potatoes and salad)

Down in Santa Cruz, you'll find the best Peruvian restaurant in Chile (and I really don't say that lightly), La Casita de Barreales. Absolutely everything on the menu is fantastic, in particular the ceviche (of which I'm not usually a huge fan). The pisco sours are brain-murderingly good. And the other great thing about dining there is that you're just a short trip away from all the vineyards in the Colchagua Valley. 

Both restaurants are better than any I ate at over three years in Buenos Aires by quite some distance.

Restaurant Review: Pasta e Vino

Pasta e Vino is probably Valparaiso's best known fancy pants restaurant. Whenever I tell people where I live, if they don't know I'll say 'around the corner from Pasta e Vino' and they'll suddenly get their bearings. I've even met someone who bought a flat here just so they could go to the restaurant more often.

Now I never really understood all this fame and praise. The first time I went, I was served possibly the worst spaghetti carbonara of my life. It was so dry I had to drink over a litre of water to get it down. The second time, a filthy waiter clearly didn't wash his hands properly and I came away with mild food poisoning. I assumed I wouldn't be going back.

Another problem was its reservation system. The restaurant was only open Thursday, Friday and Saturday and it was impossible to get a table. Actually trying to get through to someone outside of those days to at least try to make a reservation was hit and miss. Very frustrating. Because of this, Pasta e Vino got a terrible write up a few months ago in the Mercurio magazine. Words along the lines of 'haughty' and 'pretentious' were used. I couldn't have agreed more.

However, everyone kept telling me to give it another go. And a couple of weeks ago, I had a dinner planned with some acquaintances. So I phoned Pasta e Vino to try to get a table. And joy of joys...they no longer take reservations...it's now first come, first served. A much better idea.

So we turned up at just after 8pm when it opened and we got a table straight away. And this time, the experience was a huge improvement on my last two visits. The service was good, the wine pretty fantastic (although I can't remember what we had...) and the food finally lived up to expectations.

I went for the spaghetti carbonara again (I thought it important to try the same thing). Really good-not dry, nice and creamy, decent bacon.


My memory is failing me a little as to what the others had but I'm pretty sure the photos (I'm terrible at food photos as you can probably tell) show duck and plum ravioles, crab ravioles and gnocchi with a white sauce of some kind. Everything was excellent, including the dessert-an apple crumble with vanilla iccream. Even the coffee was good. Well, it was hot-and that's some achievement in Chile.





Pasta e Vino is on the corner of Templeman and Abtao, on Cerro Concepcion. Highly recommended.

Hotel Gervasoni Restaurant Review

A while back, gave a run down on where to stay in Valparaiso, Chile. One of my recommendations was the Hotel Gervasoni. The hotel is pretty spectacular and a very impressive renovation job-a bit fussy but i guess that's the idea, trying to evoke the original splendor of the property.

Anyway, they opened their restaurant a couple of months after i wrote that post and just before my trip to Buenos Aires, i finally managed to get there for dinner...

...and the restaurant is nowhere near as good as the hotel. The problems start in the details. As the restaurant opened some time after the hotel, it appears they rushed the decoration, ran out of money to do a proper job or at least didn't pay as much attention to detail as they did upstairs. There are some really nasty spotlights and the curtains look like they come from Butlins. The bathrooms also suffer from a lack of design quality. The cutlery is cheap, nasty and doesn't match.

On top of this, the restaurant is really expensive for Valparaiso, around 10,000 (us$20) pesos for a main course.

They brought us cheap water biscuits and crappy canned dip to start with and then we had salmon stuffed with cheese and bacon (pretty decent but the salmon didn't actually taste of anything) and a couple of steak dishes (one of which came with mashed potatoes with crab but didn't actually contain any crab). Nothing was above average.

The final lack of quality came with the coffee. Actually, it didn't come with the coffee and that's just my point. An expensive and wannabe luxury restaurant should be serving petits fours with coffee, or at the very least a piece of chocolate. But at the Gervasoni, you get your coffee and that's your lot. This is really wrong-to be honest, had the evening ended with a nice coffee and some delicious little cakes alongside, i'd almost certainly have better memories of the meal. As it is, my abiding memory is of a restaurant that styles itself as 'luxury' but is, in actual fact, anything but.

Here's my salmon

And here's the restaurant...there were only four of us there all night, despite it being Saturday in high season.

Apolo Restaurant Review

We went to the Apolo (end of Paseo Yugoslavia/top of Subida Apolo) for dinner last night. This isn't going to be a particularly long review because everything was rubbish except the wine. Seeing as we were the only patrons all night the service was terrible, with a surly and arrogant waiter. The food was sloppy and average. I'd forgotten that the last time we went there, everyone came away dodgy stomachs.

Apolo's sister restaurant next door La Columbina is much, much nicer.

A weekend in Santiago

We had a wedding to attend on Saturday in Santiago so we decided to go on Friday and see some houses for a client of ours. Despite my general dislike of Santiago, there are some parts that are really quite pretty on a sunny day. We went to see some houses in and around Providencia. There are some great properties in Santiago-loads of 1930s-1950s art deco and modernist houses with beautiful, sweeping wooden bannisters, huge art-deco bath tubs, high ceilings, gardens and other things that make life just a little nicer. Unfortunately, Chile is in the grip of a yuppie phase of its existence and most Chileans are happy to see these properties destroyed to make way for cheap, nasty DIY tower blocks where you can listen to your neighbour's number twos and all night shenanigans. This is slowly changing and Chileans are starting to wake up to the fact that these houses will be lost forever but the construction companies have too much economic power. It's hard for councils to say "no" as they need the money. My personal view is that there's some really, really decent profit to be made from remodelling existing structures and saving Chile's architecture. Obviously not enough to satisfy the blood-sucking construction companies but enough to make small-scale investors more than happy. And i'll be happy just to see these houses still standing in a few years time.

So, onto other topics. On Friday night we met up with some friends in Piola in Vitacura. Piola is an Italian pizza chain that was born in Treviso (aka Benettonville) and has a terrible reputation in its home town. Judging by Santiago's example, i'm not at all surprised. The entire night was a fiasco. Despite all ordering at the same time (and the restaurant not even being very busy), the food arrived at intervals of about 20 minutes, meaning that some of us had finished long before the others had even received their food. There were no pint glasses available (again-restaurant not even close to full) and we were told we could only have 330cc glasses and we'd be charged the higher price as well. The pizzas were undercooked. I complained and asked to see the manager. Instead, they sent up an inexperienced 'hostess' with large breasts swinging in my face to try and calm things down. This just enraged the girls present. The hostess finally offered a half-arsed apology and said she would 'see what Piola could do for' us. The answer? Absolutely nothing as she didn't return and then hid as we were leaving. We felt it necessary to leave just a 50 peso tip (that's 5p in England) in order to show that we hadn't just forgotten to tip and demonstrate our displeasure (to say the least). Moral of the story? Do not eat at Piola anywhere in the world.

Now, on to Saturday night and the wedding. It was a small affair, held at the Hyatt for just 350 of the bride and groom's closest friends. The Hyatt doesn't look like much from the outside, kind of like a glass-tipped suppository, but it's pretty cool from the inside with what must be one of the biggest atriums anywhere. The wedding was quite fun, although i left early as i felt a bit sick. Here's some proof that, when drunk enough, Chileans do know how to have a good time.

The Hyatt



This child is my mortal enemy and is, in actual fact, the devil himself.



The first dance



Chileans having fun



On Sunday, Lore's mum found an araña de rincon in the bath and trapped it. This spider is Chile's only really poisonous beastie and can cause severe pain and partial paralysis if you're unlucky enough to get bitten.






And on Monday, we had a really full day running around the entire city-starting off in Las Condes for a meeting and then heading to Santiago Centro to sign some papers. As it was lunch time, we headed to Domino. Domino is what fast food should be like everywhere. You walk in, stand at the bar and order from one of the many white-dressed waiters. Your churrasco or completo will arrive in just a couple of minutes. And it'll be the best churrasco of your life-tender, butter like strips of beef and tomato in a big bap. It's on Paseo Ahumada and Moneda










After lunch, we had to go to the delightful and charming neighbourhood of Pudahuel where we went to visit a demolition yard (unlike in Buenos Aires, demo yards are few and far between-it took us ages to find out about the existence of this place). We left as soon as we could as the smog in that part of town is awful and my head was hurting like hell. There were a few things that might come in handy for the house so we'll have to go back at some point. Maybe on a sunny day. After this we headed over to todoyeso to see about the cornices and moldings we're going to put back in the house. Actually, we look around their showroom and then go somewhere else we know of to get it all 40-50% cheaper. Clever, eh?

And then after this long and tiring day, we drove back to the coast for a bit of fresh air. On Wednesday, we're moving back to Valparaiso. Finally.

By the way, today is the 34th anniversary of the military coup that lead to a couple of decades of Pinochet in power. If you want to read bloggers' opinions on today's events i'd suggest heading over to bloggersinchile and checking out what other people have to say. I keep firmly out of politics as that's not the intention of this blog. Pretty pictures and positive, happy things are the order of the day here.

Portofino

We were invited for lunch yesterday to one of Valpo's best known restaurants. Portofino is regularly visited by local celebrities and the beautiful people.

Portofino is pretty expensive by Chilean standards, around 8000-12,000 pesos for a main course but the food more than makes up for it. I had the Reineta alla Pancetta (Reineta with bacon and prawns) and our lunch companions had a conger eel dish, ceviche and one of the pastas, all excellent.

The view from the restaurant is spectacular, taking in the entire bay of Valparaiso. I highly recommend the place for the food and the view.

On the other hand, the service was appalling, to put it mildly. I've done a stint in a fancy hotel/restaurant in France and know what good service is and how to give it. The clowns in Portofino had obviously been trained by monkeys of little intelligence- that's if they received any training at all. One minute we had 4 waiters buzzing around, knocking into us and generally being very annoying and very intrusive and the next minute-when we actually wanted something-they were nowhere to be seen. I had to ask the same waiter four times to bring me some more bread. When he finally did bring me some, he neglected to offer any to the other 3 people around the table. Another waiter needed 3 reminders to bring a couple of soft drinks. And then, when the bill was due, they become all friendly and charming, offering free digestifs. No dice. Crap service=crap tip.

I'm perfectly happy to put up with poor service in a small, cheap or family run restaurant. But when a place styles itself as the place to eat in Valpo then they've got to get everything right. And that includes training the staff. The problem is that in Chile (as in England until just a few short years ago), restaurants can't be bothered to spend the time or money teaching their staff how to wait tables. In Argentina, being a waiter is seen as a worthy and dignified profession. It's the same in France as well. And it shows-waiters know what they're doing. In Chile that's not the case and so it's all too common to spend a fortune on a meal out and get rubbish service.

Rant over.

If you don't mind thoroughly annoying waiters then the food in Portofino is excellent.

Cafe Con Letras

When you head up Alte Montt from Plaza Anibal Pinto, you'll reach a curve in the road with signs pointing to Cerro Alegre or Cerro Concepcion. You'll also see a huge mural in front of you and a small cafe, the Cafe Con Letras. The cafe has excellent coffee, really good puddings and cakes and a pretty extensive menu with things like salads, soups and sandwiches. Unfortunately, it's all bleeding vegetarian but the cakes are worth stopping by for alone.

The cafe also works as a small bookshop, selling slightly arty books at Chile's extortionate books prices. Most of the books are cellophaned shut but there are a few you can browse whilst sipping your coffee and chomping on your pie de limon.

One thing i should add...In every cafe and restaurant in Chile, unless you order your cortado (like a macchiato i guess) bien caliente you will invariably be served a small cup of lukewarm coffee. It's like doing your cortado as a shot. You have been warned...

Food in Chile

Chile has always had a bad rep when it comes to decent food. In general, the food here is not spectacular and is pretty bland. Compared to Peruvian or Mexican food or the Carribean Latin American countries' cuisine it isn't up to much.

However, i don't think the food here deserves such a bad reputation. I admit that when i first arrived in Chile i was distinctly underwhelmed with the dining options here. I'd just arrived from Argentina, having gorged myself on spectacular beef every day for 3 weeks and i expected something similar in Chile. Eating out at decent restaurants was not very thrilling. That's changed a lot in the last three years. International cuisine (and by that i mean the French and Italian based food that is served up in pretty much every restaurant in the world that doesn't specialise in a particular ethnic cuisine) in proper restaurants is now the best i've had in South America. It's not Chilean food, per se, but it's decent restaurant food that would stand up in most European countries and it's pretty decent value. Washed down with a good Cabernet Sauvignon and you can't go wrong.

Having lived in Buenos Aires for nigh on 3 years i cannot say the same about Argentine cuisine. With the exception of the quite divine beef, fancy restaurants in Argentina serve up complete rubbish disguised as cocina de autor. This basically means that the chef takes a perfectly good french or italian recipe and adds his own, personal, 'touch' The result is almost always pants. The worst meal i've had in my life was in Mendoza at a pricey restaurant with cocina de autor. With the exception of Azema in Buenos Aires (Carranza 1875), i found international cuisine in Argentina to be of the worst quality i've had in any part of the world. Cambodia included. It's all about style in Argentine 'nice' restaurants and to hell with serving up edible food. In Buenos Aires, give me a hole in the wall parilla any day of the week and i'm happy. In the north of Argentina, the food is very different and more 'Andean'-more stews, casseroles and corn based foods. Some people love locro, a stew of pork, pork fat, peas, corn and other goodies. Personally i can't stand the stuff and refer it it as a 'big bowl of bile', but that's just me. Otherwise, northern Argentine food is pretty tasty. So, in Argentina, stick to steak (and anything else that can be carved or power-hosed off a cow)-it's the best in the world.

On the other hand, in Chile the chefs have a bit more discipline. If they're cooking French food, they'll take a recipe from France and cook it. No trying to improve it. So the result is pretty decent French food. The same with Italian food. The same with the quite delicious Peruvian food that's so popular here. That's how it should be done-cooked to the original recipe.

One thing that Chile does particularly well is sea-food. Seeing as Chile has thousands of miles of coastline you would expect this. In Chile, anything that swims, crawls or slithers is eaten. I'm not a huge fan of shell-fish but i do like white sea-fish. There's an array of fish available-here are a few of the most common:

Congrio: Conger eel-a firm, fleshy white fish

Reineta: reineta apparently doesn't exist outside of Chilean waters, so there's no English name for it. It's another white fish, less fleshy but with a little more flavour than congrio

Albacora: despite every guide book and dictionary stating that this is a small, Tuna like fish, in Chile albacora is Swordfish. Delicious when just a little under-cooked

Lenguado: Sole

Corvina: Sea bass

Merluza: Hake

Salmon: Salmon (duh)

Pejerrey: Small, white fish usually eaten fried and whole

Most fish is cooked a la plancha (on a hot plate) and can be jazzed up by asking a la mantequilla or al ajillo (with butter or with garlic). I'm a garlic fan.

Now if you do like those slimy, smelly bits of gunk that are to be found in shells, here's a list of what you might find in chile.

Almejas: Clams

Locos: Abalone

Choritos: Mussels

Ostras: Oysters

Erizo: Sea urchin

Ostiones: Scallops

Machas: These are commonly translated as Razor Clams. The problem is that they're not razor clams. I don't know what they are, maybe another type of clam. If i actually liked them, i might try to find out. As it is, you'll just have to order them and see what you think.

Picoroco: Giant barnacle with a big claw (****someone i know once exclaimed loudly at a party that "me encanta el picorico", thinking she was saying how much she liked the barnacle. In reality, she had just shouted, "I love Hot Cock". Try not to make the same mistake. It doesn't make for a good impression****)

Other ocean going critters are:

Langosta: Lobster
Jaiba: Small crab
Centolla: King crab
Camarones: Prawns

Ceviche is a sea-food dish that involves raw fish and other stuff from the sea being marinaded in lemon juice. The citric acid cooks the fish. Some people love it. I don't. Too acid for me.

Paila marina is a sea food stew. Too fishy for me...

As for other typical food in Chile-you've got the basics that i love. Pollo/carne al jugo con arroz o puré which is slow braised chicken or beef in its own juices with either rice or mashed potatoes.

Humitas: like a tamale, with mashed sweet corn and basil steamed in corn leaf.

Pastel de choclo: the same as a humita but with minced meat underneath the corn.

Chilean empanadas: Empanadas in most countries are like Cornish Pasties-baked, savoury pastries with mince meat, or chicken, or ham and cheese. In Chile, this type exists but they also do deep fried empanadas. Really, really bad for you but very, very good. Sea food and cheese ones are the favourites.

Chorillana: This is a speciality of Valparaiso, allegedly first being served up in J Cruz in Valpo. it consists of strips of beef, onions and chips all fried together with a few eggs thrown in for good measure. It's a heart attack on a plate. And it goes well with beer.

Cazuela hmmm...cazuela...a chicken or beef water based broth (i prefer the chicken) with pumpkin, potatoes, carrots, celery, over-cooked rice, onions and corn on the cob. On a cold winter's day, there nothing quite like it.

The reason people think so little of Chilean food is that probably the most popular type of cheap, fast food is the hot-dog. A completo is the hot dog with chutcrut, tomato, mayo and ketchup or the italiano which is with avocado, tomato and mayo (as is the colours of the Italian flag). Not very inspiring but it's what most people are exposed to when looking for cheap food on the streets of Chile.

Other fast food options would be the churrasco, a thin beef sandwich or the lomito, the same thing but with pork.

Head south and you get German food which is really good. Head north and you see more Peruvian food. Also good.

Try to avoid Chinese food in Chile. Despite there being 100s of chinese restaurants in chile run by real chinese people who speak chinese, the food they serve up is not chinese. Chop suey and variations on a theme is the best you can hope for and poor quality at that. I guess that's what the chinese decided chileans would like and they've all stuck together with the plan...and it's not even very cheap.

So there you have it. A summary of Chilean food. I'm sure people will disagree with my assessment of Argentine food and probably Chilean food as well but it's all about opinions and personal tastes isn't it? Happy eating...Buen provecho...

La Colombina

We actually went to this restaurant before Buenos Aires but i didn't have time to post a review and then i forgot about it until i saw the photos on my computer. La Colombina is one of Valpo's best known restaurants. This is going to be a short review as i can't remember all that much but i do remember that the food was better than i expected. I had the Chicken in poppy seeds with stir-fried veg and a little tortilla española and the girlf had the Salmon in sesame seeds (yes they like their seeds in la colombina) with some other stuff that i can't identify from the photo...

Also, i forgot to take a photo of my food until i'd started and destroyed the presentation. You'll just have to take my word for it that it looked purty before i ruined it all. i can't really remember the price but i think it came to about 11,000 (us$22) a head including pisco sour, main course, a couple of beers and a shared pudding (can't remember the pudding...). Both the chicken and the salmon were excellent and perfectly cooked-juicy with not a hint of dryness.

La Colombina is at the end of Paseo Yugoslavo just as your start heading down the Subida Apolo.

Navy's Day Out

Today, the 21st May is the Chilean Navy's most important day. The date celebrates the supposedly heroic actions of our old friend Arthur Prat. Against impossible odds the obvious happened. Arthur died along with everyone else on his ship. I quite honestly cannot work out why the hell they made a hero out of a guy that lead his entire crew to their deaths. He should have been posthumously court-martialled and his crew's families compensated for their completely pointless deaths...His name is rather apt: A Prat. The girlf prefers Condell . She's not alone among Chileans in thinking that Prat gets more credit than he deserves.

Anyway, the date is marked by a big naval parade here in the Plaza Sotomayor and a presidential speech down the road in Congress.. It's quite an important event. Here are some photos.








The police look on, clearly jealous of the Navy Cadets' shiny blue uniforms.





And although they've got nothing to do with the armed forces, Los Caribineros de Chile also got to parade. In these photos you can see both Caribineros and Caribineras-the guys got to march with rifles. Obviously, women can't be trusted with big guns...







For some reason that i couldn't fathom, the Chilean equivalent of the cowboy or gaucho-el huaso- also got all dressed up and took a stroll with the Navy and the Pacos.




After the parade we went to have lunch in a little hole in the wall tapas bar that we've walked past dozens of times. It's called Urriola 383. The address is Urriola 383. It's quite a cool place-the food was good but not spectacular. We had Papas Bravas, bruschettas of capresse (tomato, goats cheese and basil) and also spanish chorizo along with a carnitas asadas-thin strips of beef. It ended up costing 11,000 pesos (us$20) including a couple of soft drinks, which i thought a bit pricey for what we got. Still, the atmosphere was nice so we'll probably go back at some point and try some of the other stuff on the menu. If you go, make sure the owner's daughter isn't around-she pushed me out of my seat and started eating our food...

Le Filou de Montpellier

As i mentioned in a previous post, i was waiting for a chance to get to the French restaurant around the corner from us-Le Filou de Montpellier. It's another favourite place of mine (i spend most of my lunch money in mastodonte, allegretto or here). The restaurant is a bit of a Valpo institution, in that it's been around longer than most of the restaurants on Cerros Alegre and Concepcion. It also serves some of the finest food you'll eat in Chile. The French owners who wait tables and watch over the kitchen are friendly, welcoming in their french way and know their stuff.

Run by real Frenchies who serve up real French food (not French food with the typical south american chef's 'twist' or 'toque del autor'). We've never been in the evening when the dining is a la carte, we always go for the lunch menu. The menu consists of 3 courses of invariably delicious food for 3500-4500 pesos/us$7/9. Drinks are extra, 800 pesos for a soft drink which is pretty standard for restaurants in Chile. Anyway, the menu changes daily: this time we had a starter of cous-cous with Parma ham, a main of beef strips, parsely mashed potato, slimy mushrooms (i'm not a mushroom man unless they play with my mind) and onions in an oporto sauce and a dessert of chocolate and orange crepe-all excellent. On other occasions we've had really good fish dishes and the typically French boeuf bourgignon, which was perfectly cooked.

Reservations for the evening (only friday and saturday night) are essential and recommended for lunch any day of the week as well, particularly if there are more than two of you.

Le Filou de Montpellier is on the corner of Almte Montt and Urriola just around the corner from the Iglesia Anglicana, Cerro Alegre/Concepcion. Phone 32-224663. Highly recommended.

**UPDATE: since writing this review we've been for dinner in the evenings quite a few times...and we haven't been disappointed once. Well, maybe once-the girlf had steak one time and it was tough and chewy (but we're used to Argentine steak so comparisons are a little unfair- and the glass of house red wine was a bit iffy). But if you order the beouf bourgignon or conejo a la mostaza (rabbit), or any of the fish dishes then you'll be a very happy camper. And the desserts are really good, especially the chocolate ones. Bon appetit...

Samsara Thai Restaurant

The builders aren't going to start breaking my house today. That joy will have to wait 'til Saturday. In the meantime, i've got another restaurant review for you lucky people.

We went to Samsara after a comment was left the other day mentioning Thai food and i got the urge to eat some. There's one just around the corner from us that i'd noticed a few times so i thought we should give it a go. The restaurant is in a beautifully restored house on Alte Montt 427, Cerro Alegre. However, I should have known something was up when i saw that they'd left a couple of the wooden supports in their 'original' state (ie before renovations, covered in crap and dirty). This kind of bollocks that says to me that the owner and/or the designer is up his own arse and just wants to show off about how nice the rest of it looks. 'Oh look at that old beam, what a wonderful job we did.' I don't like that kind of thing. If you're going to do something well, finish the bloody job, don't leave a couple of pieces of wood looking like shite. Just my opinion.

Anyway, unfortunately my stomach was playing up a bit so i couldn't order the Green Curry, which i use to benchmark every Thai restaurant i go to so i had to try something else. Perusing the menu, i realised that we're a bit spoilt for Thai food in England and pretty much any other 'western' country. Thai food is cheap and usually well prepared. Here, it's expensive (in local terms). The deal at Samsara is that you get a main course, salad and pudding for between 9000 and 14000 pesos (us$18-28). That's a fair bit of wedge for Chile, particularly if you don't like the puddings on offer. Anyway, I chose the stir fried beef in sweet chili sauce and the girlf had some sort of coconot milk soup with a prawn (yes, one) and a couple of bits of chicken. for dessert, we both had the chocolate cake which was really rather nice. Light and fluffy.





Now i have to say that the food was actually quite good but it didn't really resemble any kind of thai food i've eaten in: Thailand, London, Paris or Sydney. It didn't even resemble the Thai food i ate in Knowle, that well known gastonomic hell..sorry, centre...down the road from Solihull. And if you're going to spend the extra money to go and eat 'exotic' food, you want to eat something that bears at least a vague resemblance to what it's supposed to.

We arrived at 9pm to eat and there were a couple of people already there. Our food was served reasonably quickly and the waitresses were doing a fine job. That was until 10pm when the place started to fill up. And when i say fill up, i mean that there were a whole 25 people there-the place is small. However, the waitresses (4 of them) couldn't cope. Not only that but the kitchen was a disaster. A couple sat next to us at 10pm and their food arrived at 10.50, just as we were leaving. That's 50 minutes waiting with only a couple of dry biscuits to keep you company. We'd have left at 10.30 had it not taken over 15 minutes for the bill to arrive. Shoddy work.

Anyway, i wouldn't recommend this restaurant due to the fact that the service is so slow and because the food served isn't Thai (something I insist on in a Thai restaurant). I doubt i'll be going back to try my green curry. If you still fancy it, the website is here:

http://www.samsararestaurante.cl

Una ganga...2 restaurant reviews in 1: Mastodonte and Allegretto

I haven't really mentioned 'downtown' Valparaiso up to this point. There's a reason: 'El Plan' as it's called (due to the fact that it's flat while most of the city is built into the hills) is a complete nightmare. For those that know Buenos Aires, think el Microcentro around Reconquista and San Martin. At 5.30pm. But all day long. The Plan isn't really very big-at least the part where most people work ie Plaza Sotomayor to Plaza Victoria-but it's just a couple of narrow streets, one going in one direction the the other going, well, the other way. Along these two clogged streets run 498,789 bus an hour, 2 million and 4 cars. And the electrified Trole buses which frequently break down, making the 2 lanes that are already a bit tight into one exceedingly narrow path for everyone.

So i generally try to avoid El Plan, preferring the village like tranquillity of Cerro Concepcion. Which is actually just 3 minutes walk from the raging hell of downtown. When i am forced to venture down, i try to make it around lunch time as we found a little while ago the best and cheapest restaurant around. It serves my favourite chilean dish of oven baked chicken, rice and tomato salad for the princely sum of 1350 pesos. Or around us$2.30. Not only that, but the decor is absolutely brilliant. So if you're unlucky enough to find yourself downtown on a weekday (on weekends there's no traffic and you can walk around and admire the fantastic architecture-post coming soon-at your leisure), make sure you stop off for lunch at El Mastodonte. Not sure of the exact address but it's on Esmeralda just before Plaza Anibal Pinto (where you'll find the Riquet until it closes down shortly). You can't miss it, it's got a giant Woolly Mammoth head outside.





My second restaurant review is of one of my favourite places to eat, Allegretto Pizza, which produces some of the better pizzas i've had outside of Italy. The owners are an English-Chilean couple. Proper thin crusts, quality ingredients and huge: One between 2 is more than enough. The basic model is about 4000 pesos and then you add a couple of toppings. We tend to go for Parma ham, fresh tomatoes and sometimes prawns and we've not had a bad experience in the place (except when one of us decided to try to gnocci which was not the best idea, stick to pizza). The bill for 2 people with a pint of locally brewed Cerveza del Puerto is around 10,000 pesos or us$20 and is a bit of a bargain.




We went to Allegretto a couple of nights ago with a friend, it's probably the 6th or 7th time in the last 3-4 months and as i mentioned, we've not had a bad experience, nor have we seen any of the other customers have one. Except this time, when a couple of middle-aged french women sat at the table next to us. They proceeded to bitch and whine about everything; the table was wonky, the glass was smudged, the plate was dirty (both changed with the minimum of fuss), the pizza took too long to arrive and then when it did it wasn't very nice. This despite the fact that they polished off the entire thing, including pretty much every single crumb. They then paid and left a derisory tip. It's a shame the world's not perfect like France, eh? I don't know why they even bothered to leave the land of liberté, egalité, fraternité when everthing that´s not french isn´t worth contemplating.



Not that all frenchies are alike, of course...in fact we've got a fantastic french restaurant run by nice, friendly, real french folk that'll be reviewed next time i'm feeling a bit peckish around lunchtime.

Allegretto is on Pilcomayo, opposite the Iglesia Anglicana on Cerro Concepcion.