Chile : Gastronomy

In Chile it is usual to have three or four meals a day, with lunch being the main one, normally taken between 1 - 2.30.

Typical Chilean food is pretty simple and simply seasoned. Some of our important dishes are empanadas, corn pies, corn cakes, beans, and curanto, but perhaps our most delicious is our seafood. Abalones, razor clams, mussels, spider crabs, oysters, conger eels, salmon, corbinas and sole are among the wealth of fresh seafood captured along the 4,000km length of our shoreline. 

Chile’s wines and fruit have also developed an international reputation, and are produced mainly in the country's highly fertile central zone. Our vineyards are now challenging the more established players in the wine industry, providing fresh and modern flavors for the rest of the world. Aside from wine, our traditional spirit is 'pisco', mixed with egg white, lemon juice and sugar to form the ubiquitous 'pisco sour.'

In Santiago there are a huge variety of interesting restaurants at a range of prices; from Mexican and Peruvian to sushi and Middle Eastern and, of course, fast food. In other regions, however, there is not such a variety: here, Chilean, Chinese and Italian food are the most common.