Chorrillana

Chilean food isn't great. Aside from the excellent sea food (which you'd expect with one of the largest coastlines in the world) Chilean food mainly consists of meat unimaginatively paired with some kind of carbohydrate, usually bread, corn or potato. Even the Chileans tacitly acknowledge that Peruvian cuisine is better by the plethora of Peruvian restaurants that line the streets of Santiago.

The mixture of meat and stodge does come into its own when it comes to drinking and hangover food. The king in this genre is undoubtedly the Valparaiso specialty of chorrillana. Chorrillana is essentially a plate of chips (or fries if we have any North American readers) with a huge pile of fried steak, chorizo sausage, onions and egg dumped on top. This is not finesse food. It is however bloody amazing.

It's usually shared between at least two,  and as far as I can see it is always accompanied by a beer (one area that Chile does have Peru beaten hands down). Our first chorrillana we ate fittingly in Valparaiso. Having not seen one before we weren't sure what to expect.  Should we have ordered two? When it arrived all fears of leaving hungry were put firmly to bed. We had another one in Santiago on our second to last night in South America.

The picture below doesn't make it look very appealing. It was taken in poor light on a compact, but even with the best light in the world it's still just going to look like a pile of grease. The taste however more than makes up for its looks.

Tom

Veloso bar

Whilst in Sao Paulo we stayed with a couple called Antonio and Ellen. They rent out rooms in the their apartment just of av.  Paulista, the main street in Sao Paulo. One of the great things about staying with people that live in the city is their recommendations.  One of the places they recommended was a bar called Veloso,  near the Santa Ana metro stop.

The bar was on a quiet street,  and we would never have found dead it if it weren't for the directions, but the bar itself was packed. We later found that the barman has been named best in Sao Paulo for several years running, and certainly his caipirinhas were some of the the best we had.

The thing Veloso is best known for though is it coxinha. Coxinha is a population snack though out Brazil,  and is often sold from many of the stalls around Sampa and Rio.  It is chicken, with onions and spices,  covered with potato and deep fried.  They are perfect beer food,  and we're well washed down with several glasses of 'chopp', or draught beer.

Veloso was an excellent bar, from the drinks, the people, to the Brasil shirt signed by Pele on  the wall,  but the coxinhas will be what I really remember it for.

Tom