Chilean Comida

humita

Ahhhhhh sorry for the huge delay!! The process of leaving a job and starting a new one 2 days later is highly stressful and I was too busy/tired to blog. I will try to hurry and catch up now! 

cutely decorated

For some reason, despite the predominance of Latin food in the bay area and SF, there is apparently only one Chilean sit-down restaurant in like all of NorCal. After many failed attempts due to poor timing with meat-fasting Lent days, Carlos was finally able to take me to Berkeley to check Cafe Valparaiso out :)

pastel de choclo

I wanted the most authentic experience possible, so I let him do the ordering for me. We started out with a humita. Humita is a corn based appetizer that looks like a tamale as it is wrapped in its own husk. As a big fan of corn, I really liked it.

carlos con comida

For a meal I got the pastel de choclo. This is another traditional dish that is unlike anything I have eaten before. It too is heavily corn based, and then contains a variety of things inside such as beef, spices, raisins and egg <3. The consistency is pretty casserole-esque, and it kind of confused me while I was eating it. Carlos ended up getting a weird Chilean-trying-to-be-Indian dish. The sauce was all curry coconutty, but tasted a bit off. I think he was jealous of my dish ;)

Dessert was what I was most excited for because Chileans are super huge on manjar- their version of dulce de leche. We each got a dish to split. I had nino envuelto which were like caramel filled crepes, and he had torta milhoja which was a "thousand" layer cake. Both were decent, but I think I liked his better. It kinda of reminded me of baklava in its consistency, but it had a great variety of sweet flavors.

mmmm dessert!

The place was decorated all cute and the wait staff is from Chile. My only complaint is that the food is kind of expensive for what you get, and they are missing a few of the key dishes that I've been dying to try :(. At least it's something Chilean though! <:D