Gutbusters (or Doug's Food Adventure Through Chile)

Chilean food is weird. Not all Chilean food items are weird, but when a country's culinary evolution has resulted in a cuisine whose most memorable notes consist of funky-ass fast food, I think using the word 'weird' is entirely within bounds.

(To be fair, I do remember having a great bowl of shellfish ceviché at the Mercado Central in Santiago, plus some tasty empanadas at various points between Puerto Natales and Arica, but I didn't photograph any of those.)  

A Hamburguesa Completo

If you like avocado or eggs, you will like certain aspects of Chilean cuisine. If you like both, you will really like certain aspects of Chilean cuisine. While those last statements may sound like subjective opinion, you might as well take it as fact. Because Chileans really like putting avocados and/or eggs on things. Oh, and mayonnaise. I nearly forgot about the mayonnaise. Apparently, Chile is the largest consumer of mayonnaise per capita in South America. (So sayeth Wikipedia.)

The above hamburger was my first meal in Chile – a few hours after crossing the border and settling in at Puerto Natales. It was a massive, crumbly meat patty; with layer upon layer of avocado, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise piled between the meat and the bun. I had to eat it with a knife and fork – picking the burger up without parts of the patty disintegrating proved to be impossible.

Completo can mean at least two different things on a Chilean menu: it can mean a Chilean hot dog, or it can mean 'slather whatever you can possibly dig up in the kitchen onto what I ordered'. For example, a Chilean hot dog with nothing on it is a completo. A Chilean hot dog with everything on it is a completo completo. I ordered a hamburger with everything on it, so that's a hamburguesa completo.

Confused? Come on, it's not that difficult.

(Although, now that I think about it, if the waiter had brought me a hamburger with a Chilean hot dog sitting on top, that would have been pretty cool.)

After having this burger for lunch at 2:00pm, I very nearly didn't eat for the rest of the day.

A Completo Completo

This completo completo (come to think of it, a hot dog stuffed with another hot dog would have been pretty cool too) was my first food after disembarking from the Puerto Eden, after the four-day voyage between Puerto Natales and Puerto Montt. There was more avocado; there was a crapload more mayonnaise. There was also sauerkraut and chopped up tomato buried under that mess.

Given the fat content of the avocado and mayonnaise, the only reason I was able to eat again that day was because I consumed that completo as a mid-morning snack – at nine-thirty in the morning.

A Single Serving of Churrillana... Those Three Bread Rolls Were Completely Extraneous

When I arrived in Valparaíso, locals kept telling me about a dish called churrillana, which roughly translates to 'heart attack on a plate'. Okay, that's not the literal translation. But it should be. There are places in Valpo that sell nothing but churrillana – an artery-clogging, gut-busting, stupor-inducing meal of steak slices sautéed in red wine, onions and beef stock, layered on top of a plate of fries, and topped with a fried egg. I ordered a plate for lunch, at 2:00pm, after wandering around the cerros for five hours (which meant I was starving since cerro, in the local dialect, translates to 'freaking steep hill'). Ten minutes in, and halfway through my single-person serving of churrillana, I knew I was in trouble. However, my OCD compulsion to finish everything on my plate had me consuming every last scrap within a further twenty minutes. My afternoon wanderings were cancelled in favour of going back to my hostel for a three-hour nap.

I did not eat another thing until 11:00am the next morning.

A Chilean Pizza... or "Why Do I Keep Doing This To Myself?"

On my last day in Chile, before returning to Argentina, I decided I wanted something a little more familiar for lunch. I ordered a pizza. What eventually showed up at my table can be seen in the picture above. Apparently Chileans really, really like their carbohydrates because the base of the pizza was an inch-and-a-half of a dense bread-like substance. I did not order the fries; those just came with.

I didn't eat again until I arrived in Mendoza the next day, sometime around 7:30pm.

In fact, I can't really remember what happened in the few hours after finishing that pizza.

It's quite possible I just passed out in the middle of the street.