Chile Foods - Pictures and information

Traditional Food in Chile ~ Comida tipica

Food in Chile is not spicy, though Chileans do love adding hot peppers to many foods. Most often, hot sauces are served on the side. If you don't like heat, then don't add hot sauce to your meal.  Here are links to my Chile foods pages below. For travel to Chile see  Chile travel section.

• Beef and chicken cazuela, go to Chile Food Cazuela page
• Restaurant Kiel in Puerto Montt Chile (picture);
• Marraqueta, bread, Chilean hot dogs, pebre, see Chile Food Marraqueta page
• Coffee with legs, how to order coffee in Spanish, see Food in Chile Coffee page
• Nispero, custard apple, chirimoya, see Chile Foods -- Fruits page
• Santiago restaurant El Hoyo chicha, terremoto, , see El Hoyo
• Seafood, Shellfish (marisco), fish market, see Chile Seafood Page

 

Traditional Foods of Chile

If you're not planning to travel to Chile, but would like to try some traditonal Chilean Foods, why not get a Chile Cook book? Have a look at some available on Amazon.com:  Cooking the South American Way, and The Latin American Kitchen, or The South American Table.

Chile Foods Pictures and Information ~ Click and see Food in Chile

Traditional Foods of Chile are tasty comfort foods, simple home cooking with no pretensions, but a good meal with simple ingredients. The seafood and fish is usually very fresh, since most of Chile is close to the Pacific Ocean. I've inclued pictures of a traditional meal I had at the El Hoyo restaurant in Santiago Chile, and a seafood meal in Renaca, on the seaside.

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Comida tipica / Typical Chilean foods General info

I thought that traditional Chilean food would be hot and spicy, liberally laced with chilis and hot sauces, but the food in Chile seems more like traditonal British cooking than spicy Mexican. In fact, some dishes are quite bland, so there's hot sauce like pebre to spice it up!

McDonald's abound in Santiago, with the menu adapted to South American tastes : The beef patties seemed to be beefier, a hamburger dubbed 'McNifico' (say it) came with a lovely avocado sauce like a mild guacamole, and the the buns reflected Chile's excellent breads. McDonald's also catered to the Chilean food passion for soft ice cream, and served up cones from counters that opened directly onto the sidewalks.

Names of foods (and plants) can be the trickiest to translate, so I prefer to have a particular food and a native language speaker right in front of me to be sure we are talking about the same thing! I've included the Spanish name of the foods from Chile when possible; And Chilean native and friend, Carmen, has kindly elaborated on some of the Chile foods.

A Word about Napkins:

In casual restaurants and coffee bars, napkins were set out on counters and tables as they are shown in the photo at the top of this page:

Small squares of highly-unabsorbent, single-ply tissues carefully fanned out inside a glass or tumbler and placed on each table.

I confess I had to watch other diners to confirm that these were indeed napkins and not drink coasters before I used one.

Of course, when I went for high tea at the Ritz-Carlton in Santiago's El Golf, (this is the only Ritz-Carlton in South America!), the napkins, as all else, were first rate.

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See all Chile Pages ~ Full Picture Index ~ Click on a Pic and Go!

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