Breakfast is always a struggle, as it is in most countries. A struggle against time, willpower, and availability of substance. I usually find myself waking up at 7:35 for 8am class, so I'm left very little time to fashion any respectable sort of breakfast. Most days, I resort to an un-toasted piece of bread with some jam thrown on top, or in the best-case scenario, a yogurt with some water. Not exactly the most nutritional morning pick-up, but definitely sufficient to get the day started. Either way, at 9:30am I almost always find myself at the school-side almacen, or small foodstuffs store, buying a cheese and ham sandwich with a chocolate milk for the grand total of $1. If lucky, the almacen will have a freshly-baked brazo de reina (literally: queen's arm) cake on offer, a particularly delectable shortcake with manjar (dulce-de-leche) stuffed inside and topped with heaps of powdered sugar. Needless to say, supplementing the meals I receive at home in Taltal is not so healthy!
I always return from school to get lunch around 1pm. The most popular meal by far is the aforementioned rice with fried eggs, something that the whole family genuinely enjoys but I find entirely unsatisfying. Besides this meal, there are exactly five others that I have eaten since arriving nearly four months a go - bringing the whole repertoire to six meals in constant rotation. The others are at least somewhat more appetizing and filling: spaghetti with a bolognese sauce, pork chops atop white rice, lentils cooked with ground beef and other oddities, white beans in a chicken broth soup, and my favorite, fried fish. But the fried fish meal comes once every two weeks, If I'm lucky, because my homestay mother Carmen refuses to get her hands dirty making the fish - that's Walter's job, she says - my homestay father. If I had my way, it would be the fish every single night. The other options just don't satisfy my taste buds.
Dinner isn't usually eaten in Chile; rather, the nighttime meal is simply known as te (tea) and is taken around 7pm. This consists of tea, which happens to be home-made and very good, and toasted bread with either butter and jam or mayo and ham slices. I usually opt for both, but try not to satiate my hunger by overloading on bread as I'm pretty sure I can see a carbohydrate-pouch forming around my lower abdomen. If a family does eat an actual nighttime meal, though my family does not, it is called once or once comida. This would normally consist of leftovers from the lunch of the day or maybe a delicious fish meal late at night. More importantly, we don't have it. I have resorted to protein powder, mercifully supplied by my father, and crackers for a lame attempt at nighttime hunger satiation!
So that's a pretty informative description of my eating habits here in Taltal - in general, very typical of the eating habits of most Chileans. Now, for the sake of comparison, let's take a look at the meal structure and content at Portillo. Note: though the ingredients are often very Chilean, the sheer size and number of meals is not very indicative of Chilean eating. Rather, the Portillo gastronomic experience is better described as sheer gluttony.
Full shank of lamb and mashed potatoes is what I sat down to just one hour after arriving at the hotel. Add the appetizer of some delicious soup or salad and then the myriad options available for dessert, and you can begin to see why I call Portillo sheer gluttony. In fact, the ice cream on offer for dessert is made in the hotel, and is easily some of the best I've ever had. Yes, Portillo is a ski resort, but during this most recent trip I often felt like I was on a foodie vacation instead of a ski vacation!
Sky Salivating over the Menu at Portillo
There are basically three and a half sit-down meals each day - the half being tea, which is just a coffee/tea and bread with jam offering. Breakfast is delicious, with a full menu of eggs as you like 'em, pancakes, cereals, yogurt and fresh fruit. Perfect start to the day really. Lunch is served at 1:30pm and is a more formal affair. Three courses always beginning with an interesting soup or salad - the soups always very hearty and the salads incredibly fresh. Main course for lunch is more modest than dinner, but still very substantial, and maybe too filling for motivating oneself to return to the slopes in the late afternoon. The lamb shank, for example, was overload...it was massive. Apart from the standard meat offering, Portillo also allows guests to choose from a vegetarian dish or a constantly-changing array of seafood plates.
Dinner deserves its own paragraph. One spectacular dinner that I will never forget went as follows: king crab appetizer, duck ravioli in a blueberry-merlot sauce, and a dessert I now forget...needless to say it was tasty. All three of us could not help but sit in amazement at how good that duck ravioli was - easily the best pasta dish of my life. One night a spinach gnocchi to die for, another night's main course of venison in cabernet sauce and a sauteed yellowfin tuna dish. Yet another included a spectacular seafood risotto that I couldn't get enough of. We truly became gluttons, eating a truly dizzying array of meats during the week: beef, pork, lamb, turkey, chicken, venison, ostrich, duck...and I'm sure I'm still forgetting some. The seafood offerings were endless, and endlessly delicious: tuna, salmon, congrio, king crab, Chilean abalone, razor clams, lobster, Chilean sea bass, flounder, hake, squid, octopus, scallops...and still I'm omitting more. It was like eating out at a new two- or three-star New York restaurant for seven nights in a row, yet we were at the same table, with the same two or three waiters at our constant service.
The service, oh the service. Apart from constant confusion during breakfast hour, the service at Portillo is legendary. Our waiter, Paul, did every single thing in his power to make this third Portillo experience the best yet. When we all ordered the same main dish for dinner, but still wanted to try the other dishes, he wouldn't hesitate to bring one or two more just to share. Any and all of my crazy dessert requests - like banana and chocolate ice cream with strawberries and chocolate sauce - brought out in a heartbeat. Cap that off with a birthday surprise for Sky including a cake (literally, they brought a cake), candles, balloons and ten singing waiters, and I'd say we had a truly unforgettable culinary experience. The only problem was finding stomach space to fit all that damn food.
Mmmmm...duck ravioli. Mmmmm...fried eggs atop rice. Not much of a competition, but definitely representative of my return from Portillo to Taltal in general. You see, Portillo is the cream of the crop in Chile, the place where the rich of Santiago go vacationing. While it is certainly expensive by American standards, it still represents an extremely good value when juxtaposed with elite ski resorts such as Vail and Jackson Hole. Yet Chileans pay even more than Americans to visit places like Portillo, as us gringos are exempt from the whopping 17% IVA tax...simply making it all that more difficult for middle class Chileans to go on vacation. Having now spent four months in Taltal, a place not exactly known for picturesque beauty or wealthy residents, I am able to appreciate experiences like this most recent Portillo trip that much more. Just as the duck ravioli doesn't taste as good without having eaten fried eggs atop rice three times a week, my life and upbringing in the United States doesn't feel as special without having lived in places like Taltal. Taltalinos aren't able to spend a week skiing at Portillo. Each and every paycheck goes to skyrocketing grocery prices, basic utilities, and clothing for the children. Skiing and eating at the Portillos of the world is truly a privilege, and I am more than lucky to have a father that is willing and able to take me along for the ride.
