Contemporary Art and Contemporary Food

These dogs continue inside

Santiago, February 5, 2014

We depart for Valporaiso today at noon.   We look back on our five days in Santiago with pleasure.  We have enjoyed this capital and seen most of the tourist sights and parts that are unknown to most tourists.

Art Museum

Vitacura, Tim’s neighborhood, is very upscale and could be in any city with a climate like this.  In many ways it has reminded us of the upscale suburbs of Los Angeles or parts of the Peninsula south of San Franscico with its well-trimmed gated homes and sprawl.   Vitacura also has a good collection of restaurants and excellent transport to other parts of the city.

Yesterday we headed downtown to the Bellavista area of town to the central park, home to the National Museum of Art and the Contemporary Art Musuem.  We spent a while in the Contemporary Art Museum at a show called Trasnochada, which we couldn’t translate, but assume to be something about the art that underground artists produced during the Dictatorship from 1973 to 1980.   One piece that John found astounding was a collection of toys, from Lego to Bibindum, the Michelin Man, all laid out on a plank, marching forward, and all with masks on their faces—to remain unknown.   

We lunched at Wonderful Cafe, Ben getting his XXdry skim cappuccino to go with his bowl of assai and yoghurt (assai=açai, a fruit).  He enjoyed it while John enjoyed his Montreal bagel with excellent lox, cream cheese, onion, tomato and capers.  

Back at Tim’s home, we rested around the pool for a couple of hours, did some reading and then headed out to dinner at Miraolas, one of the city’s best fish restaurants, about a ten minute walk from here.   None of the waiters spoke English, and we were the only English speaking people in the room, as far as we could make out.   They did have menus in English, though.

Razor Clams

John enjoyed a national cocktail, the pisco sour to begin.  It’s excellent.   Then we got a lovely sauvignon gris from Leyda Winery to go with the shrimp John ordered and the sweet tiny razor clams Ben chose.  These were completely unlike the razor clams on the US East Coast.  They were rounded, not straight edged.  Very sweet, and served with a mozzarella cheese melt.

Main courses were reineta for Ben, which is hake we think, served with  a concasse of tomatoes, garlic and oil.  John had sea bass txerliche, which is a Basque dish of grilled bass with a sauce of squid and squid ink.   Very mild, very soft on the palate.   

And then home to bed.