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Getting to know Santiago, Chile Through a Food Tour with FoodyChile

If you have only one day in Santiago, what is the best way to see it? A food tour where you walk through the city, visiting markets, restaurants, street vendors and get an introduction to the culinary culture of Chile. After all, food is something that we all share. It is a way to look at the world. Food is a way to get to know another culture. Our guide was Colin Bennett, an American who lives in Santiago. Originally from the mid-west, Colin came to Chile to teach English and ended up staying. About eight years ago, Colin started FoodyChile.

We met in the Plaza de Armas in the center of the city. A map lies in the ground in the center of the plaza showing the now dry Rio Ma Pocho that runs through the city of Santiago. Colin explained Chile's history to us, from the indigenous Ma Pocho who gathered foods like shellfish, pinenuts, beans and mushrooms to ingredients brought to Chile by the Spanish.

We began walking and soon was in Portal Fernandez Concha. A hotel in the 1860's, today the promenade is filled with a row of hot dog vendors. The Chilean hot dog, with lots of toppings, is Chile's own national junk food.

19 April, 2018

Please the Palate Pick of the Week: Chilean Pinot Noir and Chardonnay

If you had asked me a week ago about Chilean wine, I would not have had much to say. It is not a region that I had explored and my familiarity with the wines was generally limited to the value wines made with Cabernet Sauvignon and Carmenere. But after spending a week exploring Leyda Valley, Casablanca Valley and Limari Valley, three areas in the coastal region of Chile, I am enamored. Without a doubt the elegant Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs from these regions are the Please The Palate pick of the week. Chile is a long and skinny country. From north to south, Chile is approximately 2600 miles long. On the west side is the Pacific Ocean and only 110 miles across the country are the Andes, with Argentina on the other side. There are vineyards near the Andes, there are vineyards in the Central Valley (between the Andes and the Coastal Mountain Range) and there is the Coastal Region where vineyards lie between the Coastal Mountain Range and the Pacific Ocean.

10 March, 2018

Carménère for the Thanksgiving table

This story originally appeared in the Napa Valley Register. For many wine enthusiasts, picking wine for the holiday table is one of utmost importance. Once the meat, stuffing, potatoes, green beans and pumpkin pie are prepared, the question is what to drink with the meal. Classic choices for red wines are pinot noir, Beaujolais or grenache, but as Thanksgiving approaches, perhaps the perfect wine for your holiday dinner should be carménère. In fact, Nov. 24 also marks International Carménère Day honoring the 22nd anniversary of the rebirth of the grape. Carménère is a grape variety that was one of the original blending grapes in Bordeaux, France. Thanks to phylloxera in the late 1800s, the vineyards were destroyed and it was thought that the grape was extinct. Meanwhile, Chile had transported some grapes from France and was busily producing an herbaceous red wine that they called “Chilean merlot.” Then 22 years ago, in 1994, on Thanksgiving, a French DNA specialist identified the Chilean merlot as the rare Bordeaux grape carménère. With the understanding of the true identity of the grape, the Chileans readjusted their treatment of the grape. Instead of picking early, as they had been doing, they let the grape reach ripeness by harvesting late.

23 November, 2016