If you're a fan of seafood, you'll love Chile. Here, you will find many varieties of tasty mariscos (shell fish) in abundance. Along with wine, they are a national treasure and feature in many traditional Chilean dishes.
Here, the Chilean pacific is full of fruits of the sea with so many different types of fish and shell fish that you wouldn't even dream of existing.
I first got the taste for seafood when I went to one of the makeshift restaurants in the fish market (a famous food market in Santiago called 'la vega') with some Chilean friends.
They knew all the best dishes and urged me to try Paila Marina (a shell fish soup) I thought I may as well start simple.
My bowl came to the table looking like something out of a pirates of the carribean movie! Oysters, muscles, octopus, Machas (which I don't think exist in Europe but are similar to clams)
At first I was a bit sceptacle, but after one taste I was hooked. This first encounter marked the beginning of my seafood quest to find the best fish dishes in Chile.
After careful and rigorous testing I would strongly recommend to try following dishes:
1) Paila marina (a bowl full of different types of shell fish with white wine)
2) Chupe de Mariscos (a dish made with mushed bread, seafood and cheese on top)
3) Reineta (the name translated means little queen but it's a delicious fish)
4) Machas a la Parmesana (shell fish in the shell covered with Parmesan cheese)
5) Ceviche (typically a Peruvian dish of raw fish marinated in lemon juice)
6) Empanadas de Mariscos (fried pastries with seafood inside)
7) Empanadas de camaron-queso (a deep fried cheese and prawn filled pastry)
8) Curanto (a special dish traditionally from the South of Chile which involves digging a hole in the ground, filling it with meat and shell fish covered over with leaves and leaving it to cook for a day)
So if you visit, don't miss out on one of Chile's greatest assets: Mariscos!
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