Chilean cuisine combines Spanish colonial cooking with Indigenous Mapuche ingredients, a 4,000 km Pacific coastline and fertile central valleys. It is hearty and unpretentious, built around corn, beef, seafood and some of the best fruit and wine in the Southern Hemisphere.

Classic dishes

  • Empanadas de pino: baked pastries filled with pino, a mix of minced beef and onions with a black olive, a slice of hard-boiled egg and raisins. They are the essential food of Fiestas Patrias.
  • Pastel de choclo: a casserole of beef, chicken, olives and egg topped with a sweet, creamy corn crust and baked in a clay dish. It is a summer favourite when corn is in season.
  • Humitas: ground fresh corn with basil and onion, wrapped in corn husks and steamed.
  • Cazuela: a soup of beef or chicken with a whole potato, pumpkin, corn on the cob and green beans.
  • Porotos granados: fresh beans stewed with corn and pumpkin.

Seafood

The cold Humboldt Current brings excellent seafood. Try machas a la parmesana (razor clams baked with Parmesan), caldillo de congrio (conger eel soup, celebrated in a poem by Pablo Neruda), chupe de jaibas (crab gratin) and ceviche. Santiago's Mercado Central is famous for seafood restaurants.

Curanto

On the island of Chiloé, curanto is cooked in a pit: shellfish, meat, sausages, potatoes and milcao (potato bread) are layered on hot stones and covered with nalca leaves and earth. It is a communal tradition dating back centuries.

Street food

The completo is Chile's hot dog, piled with tomato, avocado and lots of mayonnaise (a "completo italiano" echoes the Italian flag). The chorrillana, a mountain of fries topped with beef, onions and fried eggs, comes from Valparaíso. Sopaipillas, fried pumpkin dough, are sold from street carts, especially on rainy days.

Once

Chileans often replace dinner with "once" (pronounced "on-say"), an evening meal of tea or coffee with bread, ham, cheese, avocado and cakes. Marraqueta, a crusty bread roll, is the national bread, and Chileans eat more bread per person than almost any other country.

Wine and pisco

Chile is one of the world's largest wine exporters. The Maipo, Colchagua, Casablanca and Maule valleys produce excellent Cabernet Sauvignon, Sauvignon Blanc and Carménère, a grape once thought extinct in Europe and rediscovered in Chile in 1994, according to Wines of Chile. Pisco, a grape brandy, is mixed into the pisco sour; Chile and Peru both claim it as their own.

Fiestas Patrias

Chile's national holidays on 18 and 19 September are the biggest celebration of the year. Families gather for asados (barbecues), empanadas and chicha (fermented grape or apple drink), and fondas, outdoor festival grounds, host music and dancing. The national dance, the cueca, imitates a rooster courting a hen, with dancers waving handkerchiefs.

Customs and etiquette

  • Greet with a single cheek kiss in social settings, including when meeting someone for the first time.
  • Use formal "usted" with older people and in business until invited otherwise.
  • Lunch is the main meal, and dinner or once is late.
  • Arrive 15 to 30 minutes late to parties, but on time for business meetings.
  • Tipping 10% is customary in restaurants and is usually suggested on the bill ("propina sugerida").

For living costs, see our Chile country guide or our guide to moving to Chile.