We're headed to Santiago this December, on a lark after finding cheap flights from Chicago. Think we'll be staying in Providencia, Bellavista, or Barrio Brasil.

Any updated restaurant recommendations? Places serving seafood are especially useful, as my wife doesn't really eat red meat (chicken sometimes; seafood, always). Specific dish suggestions also appreciated.

There are now two outposts of the Peruvian restaurant group Tanta in Santiago---two of the eight in the world, along with the one in Chicago, outside Peru. The one on Avenida Kennedy is near the Parque Arauco shopping mall in the Las Condes neighborhood. This is a high-end dining and shopping area; Anakena, a high-end Thai restaurant I mentioned in a previous post, is in the Grand Hyatt Hotel there, which is where the President of the US stayed the last time one deigned to visit Chile.

If you stay in Providencia, Bellavista, or Brasil, you will need to take a cab to Tanta or Anakena at Parque Arauco (or a bus, but who takes a bus to a fancy restaurant?) but it's a short ride.

You'll be an even quicker cab ride or perhaps just a walk from the Tanta in Providencia, which is located in the Sky Costanera building, billed as the tallest building in South America, which contains hotel rooms, restaurants, and a six-story shopping mall. The Sky Costanera also has an observation tower that affords a lovely view of the city, especially in the evening, if the air is clear, which this time of year, it probably will be. (Smog in bowl-shaped Santiago is worst in the winter and in the mornings.)

Tanta Las Condes
Av. Kennedy 5413, local 371
Boulevard Parque Arauco

Tanta Providencia
Av. Andrés Bello 2425, Providencia
Costanera Center, local 5156

At the very high end of Peruvian dining, there is also an Astrid y Gastón in Santiago, in Providencia, as it happens, and La Mar on Nueva Costanera in the Vitacura neighborhood, the upper northeast corner of the city. Nueva Costanara's probably a longer cab ride than I'd bother to take with several other excellent restaurant options closer to where you'll be staying.

Astrid y Gastón
Antonio Bellet 201, Providencia

La Mar
Nueva Costanera 4076, Vitacura

Really, there are so many good restaurants in Providencia and Bellavista that you shouldn't have much trouble finding one you are glad you picked.

I was looking around to see what exceptional restaurants that I remember are still around and found some well-rated ones that I'd gladly to go to again if I could, including Aquí esta Coco (seafood, Providencia), Le Bistrot (French, Providencia), La Pizza Nostra (pizza/Italian, Providencia; I still miss their beef carpaccio), and Azul Profundo (seafood/Peruvian, Bellavista).

There are many good seafood restaurants in Santiago, Peruvian and other, and many more very good sushi restaurants than there used to be. Not much Thai, just a few long-lived Indian places, almost no Mexican, almost no Chinese. Perennially excellent steak (probably grass-fed Uruguayan or Argentinian) and other beef and meat at steakhouses like Happening, Ox, and Eladio and at Argentinian- and Brasilian-style churrascarias.

As always, I must recommend a daytime visit to El Mercado Central: a lively show, a feast for the eyes, and abundant affordable options for fresh seafood for lunch.

Hello! I was just there in June for a friend's wedding, so i am happy to report on the restaurants we did have a chance to visit! We spent most our time in Valparaiso, so if you are heading that way during your trip, please let me know and I can recommend some fantastic seafood restaurants there! We took a lot more photos of food there, as well

In Santiago, we stayed in the Bellavista area at a gorgeous boutique hotel which i would highly recommend, The Aubrey Hotel. They have a fantastic piano bar that both tourists and locals frequent. My favorite part is that you receive a free pisco sour with check in, which was one of the best pisco sours i had throughout Chile (trust me, i had many!) I was thrilled to hear it wasn't a piscola, the national cocktail of chile, which I absolutely despise yet still drank about 12 of them at the wedding.

For restaurants, my dear friend who was born and raised in Santiago brought us americans to Bar Liguria, which was a terrific lunch amongst the 9-5ers of Santiago. Unfortunately, my friend ordered everything for us in his confusing spanish, so I dont remember our exact meal, but we did share 2 seafood dishes that were very good.


Our hotel recommended an upscale chilean restaurant called Peumayen Ancestral Food, in the bella vista neighborhood.
Our dinner had some hits and misses, the strange "bread basket course" in the beginning being the miss. But the fresh fish they prepared for me was absolutely terrific. The pride themselves on using different chilean ingredients, and serving dishes from all the different regions of Chile. Really, some unfamiliar and unique flavors all around. An experience i will remember.

We also followed in anthony bourdain's footsteps and decided to try Fuente Allemana, a sandwich shop famous for lunchtime Lomitos. Don't go during lunch, its extremely intimidating, crowded, and not tourist friendly. We took our friends advice and stumbled in around 2:30, my prefered time for lunch anyways, and found seats right away. OH MY, this country LOVES mayonnaise. If you aren't a fan, order it on the side





I agree with Katie and second your visit to the central market. Be aware of pick pocketers and theft, which every local in santiago continued to remind me. We had a fresh, affordable seafood lunch there as well!




Someone sent us to Emporio La Rosa, which is supposedly the best ice cream in South America. Good? Yes. Worth the special trip? Not in my opinion. But if its a hot day and you are in the neighborhood its a great place to sit on the patio or head to the park across the street and eat some ice cream!






The Aubrey
Constitución 317, Santiago

Fuente Alemana
Avda Pedro de Valdivia 210, Local,

Bar Liguria
Avenida Pedro de Valdivia, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan, Chile

Peumayen Ancestral Food
Providencia - Constitución 136, Santiago, Región Metropolitana, Chile

Emporio La Rosa
Merced, Santiago, Región Metropolitana, Chile

What wonderful recommendations -- thanks. And yes, cvittorio, we're planning on Valparaiso as well, so I'll send you a PM.

I think the Coca-Cola Company wants the piscola to be considered the national drink of Chile, but it always seemed to me to be the national cocktail of Chile's high school students. In 10 years there, I never saw anyone over age 18 drink one. But then, I wasn't invited to any weddings.

Chileans make a game effort to dispute the creation of the pisco sour with Peru, but the consensus seems to be that Peru has the better claim. Still, a pisco sour is the aperitif you'll most likely be offered at a cocktail party or before a dinner. You know you're at a good party when one of the guests shows up with his own blender, bag of ice (not an easy thing to find in Chile), eggs, lemons, powdered sugar, bottle of pisco, and bottle of bitters, so you can have the best pisco sour which is his pisco sour.

Another typical Chilean aperitif is the vaina, a sweet sherry-based drink. I don't like it as much as a pisco sour.

Unlike the piscola, apparently the chilcano (pisco and ginger ale) is a serious thing in Peru: I listened to an episode of Rick Bayless and Steve Dolinsky's The Feed podcast the other day in which Dolinksy interviewed a well-known bartender in Lima making one. Why this is not a thing in Chile I don't know, unless it's because Coca-Cola has long dominated the soft drink marketed there (and I do mean dominated; I can't remember ever seeing a Pepsi there), and you have to hunt a bit to find things like ginger ale and tonic water in the stores.

Bellavista at night is a good place to get a caiprinha, made with Brazilian cachaça and key limes. But be careful about having more than one; it's a seriously strong drink.

Katie wrote:Unlike the piscola, apparently the chilcano (pisco and ginger ale) is a serious thing in Peru: I listened to an episode of Rick Bayless and Steve Dolinsky's The Feed podcast the other day in which Dolinksy interviewed a well-known bartender in Lima making one. Why this is not a thing in Chile I don't know, unless it's because Coca-Cola has long dominated the soft drink marketed there (and I do mean dominated; I can't remember ever seeing a Pepsi there), and you have to hunt a bit to find things like ginger ale and tonic water in the stores.

Coca Cola does own Seagram's Ginger Ale, though, so maybe it's not impossible to find.

stevez wrote:Coca Cola does own Seagram's Ginger Ale, though, so maybe it's not impossible to find.

As I fondly remember, a British next-door neighbor introduced me to the gin tónica as an end-of-the-workday, I-have-a-headache-from-trying-to-speak-Spanish-at-work-all-day form of relaxation, and once I knew where to look for it, I did buy tonic water and ginger ale regularly in Santiago. But they are not big sellers there (beyond, presumably, sales to British and American expats). Chile once prided itself on being the world's leading per capita consumer of Coca-Cola. These days they are second only to Mexico in that regard. Don't get me started on what they do with Orange Fanta.