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Best Dining Bets

by Frommers Travel Guides
wiley
Content provided by Frommers
  • Aqui Esta Coco, Santiago (tel. 2/235-8649): This place is wildly popular with foreign visitors, with good reason: The kitsch atmosphere is as fun as the food is mouthwatering. The restaurant is spread over two levels of a 140-year-old home and festooned with oddball and nautically themed gadgets and curios. Arrive a little early and enjoy an aperitif in the cavelike, brick cellar lounge. Seafood is the specialty here.

  • Astrid y Gaston, Santiago (tel. 2/650-9125): Astrid y Gaston is the best restaurant in Santiago -- the reason you'll often need to make reservations days in advance. The chef uses the finest ingredients, combined so that each plate bursts with flavor and personality; here, you'll find French, Spanish, Peruvian, and Japanese influences, as well as impeccable service, an on-site sommelier, and a lengthy wine list. If you can afford it, don't miss dining here.

  • Camino Real, Santiago (tel. 2/232-1758): There's nothing quite like dining in Santiago with the city lights twinkling at your feet. The Camino Real is perched high on the Cerro San Cristobal hill overlooking the expanse of Santiago and out to the Andes. You're here for the views, not necessarily the food, so make sure you visit this classic restaurant on a clear day or night.

  • Bar Liguria, Santiago (tel. 2/235-7914): The two Bar Ligurias in Providencia are equally lively and loads of fun, often filling up before 10pm and spilling out onto tables on the sidewalk. Everyone loves the Ligurias: actors, artists, businessmen, and locals converge here in a vibrant melange that always feels celebratory. The Chilean fare is hearty and delicious, and the sharply dressed waiters rushing to and fro provide quick, attentive service.

  • Mercado Central (Santiago; no phone): The food's overpriced and it's certainly not the best in Santiago, but the colorful ambience here will make you overlook that. The Mercado is a lofty, steel barn of a building that's home to the central fish and vegetable market and plain-as-Jane seafood restaurants that serve Chilean traditional lunches. Garrulous restaurateurs will try anything to get you to choose their eatery over another.

  • Pasta e Vino, Valparaiso (tel. 32/249-6187): There's no view of the city harbor, but the mouthwatering cuisine at Pasta e Vino makes this restaurant one of the top five in Chile -- which is why you'll often need to book days in advance. Pasta e Vino virtually launched the culinary revolution in Valparaiso, offering a warm, intimate ambience with brick walls and wooden tables, gourmet Italian cuisine that is consistently good, a well-chosen wine list, and owner-attended service.

  • El Chiringuito, Zapallar (tel. 33/741024): El Chiringuito, located in the upscale beach enclave Zapallar, is surely the most famous restaurant along Chile's Central Coast, and with good reason. Is there any more delightful place on a sunny day than to dine alfresco on seafood while watching the waves crash and pelicans swoop about? Alternatively, head south to the tiny harbor at Maitencillo for ultra-fresh shellfish sold at simple seafood stalls near the beach.

  • Tololo Beach, La Serena (tel. 51/242656): The varied menu here has plenty of seafood entrees, omelets, meat dishes, and pizza, as well as a good selection of native fish like albacore and rollizo you won't often find elsewhere. You can sit right on the beach amid some small palms, but the most pleasant seating is on the slightly Oriental-style terrace, where you can rest your spine against the tall, leather-backed chairs and watch the pelicans dive into the Pacific against the backdrop of La Serena's port neighbor, Coquimbo, across the bay.

  • Maracuya, Arica (tel. 58/227600): The Azapa and Lluta valleys are Chile's tropical fruit orchards, and this restaurant makes ample use of its namesake, the passion fruit (maracuya, in Spanish). For fish and seafood, it's Arica's best choice, with fruit flavoring sweet-and-sour sauces for the varied choices on the menu. Couple this with its location, perched in a villa almost over the water on a rocky stretch of coastline near the Morro, and you have one fine restaurant indeed.

  • Latitude 42 at the Yan Kee Way Lodge, Ensenada (tel. 65/212030): Worth the drive from Puerto Varas, this gorgeous restaurant boasts superb views of the Osorno Volcano and delectable cuisine served in a beautiful dining room. The talented chef uses locally grown produce to create imaginative dishes that come as close to nouvelle cuisine as you're ever going to get in southern Chile. Service is impeccable and there's a cigar bar and a cellar for wine tasting, as well.

  • Ultima Esperanza, Puerto Natales (tel. 61/411391): Few places in Patagonia compare with this old favorite in Puerto Natales that boasts an 18-year tradition. The decor is nothing to write home about, but restaurants are about food, right? Ultima Esperanza has the best food in Magallanes, even beating out its rivals in the big city of Punta Arenas. It makes the best of Puerto Natales' location -- on the ocean but near Patagonian ranches -- to combine meats and seafood in a mean curanto, also serving fine fish like conger eel and the renowned centolla, or king crab.

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