Chile Has Become the Rising Star of South America's Food Scene — Here's Why (2024)

Mapuche, Chile’s largest Indigenous group, have a word that defies concise translation. In English, peumayen is often rendered “place of dreams,” but that underplays the importance of dreaming to the Mapuche. To them, a dream can be a wish, a hope, or a prophecy. It can be an idyll visited in slumber, or a fantasyland that stirs the imagination. Sometimes, you don’t even know a peumayen until you’re in it.

As I stepped into the forecourt of the Vik winery, in a fertile valley that the Mapuche call a “golden place,” I found myself in a sweeping, water-filled plaza. Boulders and rocks gathered by the Chilean sculptor Marcela Correa and her architect husband, Smiljan Radić, had been scattered across the shallow pool. The installation, water mirror, serves as both a subtle nod to terroir and a grand welcome. It’s also a feat of sustainable engineering: as water flows across the plaza, it cools the wine cellar beneath.

The winery building, designed by Radić, is no less remarkable. It looks as if a glowing spaceship had landed on the fertile soil. A translucent-white canopy bathes the interior in natural light. Glass façades offer clear views through the whole structure, to the vineyards and Andes mountains beyond. The winery complex telegraphs modernity, while the surrounding foothills testify to the passage of time.

On this ancient land that has fed countless generations, and which now gives rise to modern architecture and new wine, Iglimpsed the Chile I was seeking: peumayen.

Chile is among the richest countries in South America, as measured by per-capita GDP. But this 2,672-mile-long sliver of Pacific coast is wealthy in other ways. In his inaugural address in 2022, Chile’s youngest-ever president, Gabriel Boric, then 36, nodded to Chile’s history — not just its colonial past but also its gaping inequality — and voiced hope for “a dignified future,” while also lauding its magical landscapes and agriculturalbounty.

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That is the Chile my husband and I hoped to experience — history and modernity, country and city, wine and food. We asked Travel + Leisure A-List advisor Jean Sanz to create a nine-day itinerary that would show off the country’s heritage and abundance and to book local guides.

It seemed apt to begin at Vik. In 2006, the billionaire investor Alex Vik and his wife, Carrie, who also own hotels in Uruguay and Italy, bought 17 square miles in the Millahue Valley, two hours south of Santiago, where the colluvial sands of the Andes meet the loam of the coastal hills — the perfect terroir, they believed, to produce world-class wine. They planted vines, and eight years later, the winery opened, along with a 22-room hilltop hotel.

Designed by the architect Marcelo Daglio, the hotel could be a Bond villain’s aerie, with a shimmering bronzed-titanium roof that echoes the surrounding hills. In 2019, Vik added seven bungalows, which, like the rest of the hotel, showcase contemporary art from the Viks’ collection. Ours was decorated with 10 blown-glass works by Dale Chihuly.

Guests are encouraged to roam the grounds. Well-marked trails wind through the hills, and a guided horseback ride is offered with every stay (rider beware: my mount was aptly named Trampista, Spanish for “trickster”). Tasting grapes off the vine is encouraged (unlike the sweet carmenère, the tannic cabernet sauvignon grapes have a mouth-puckering astringency).

The vines’ very presence speaks to change: grapes are not native to this country. “The story of wine in Chile is a story of colonization and evangelization,” said Andrea Garcia, our guide at Vik. In the 1540s, the Spanish imported vines — mostly the Pais variety — to make communion wine. Subsequent grapes were introduced, including carmenère, which was originally mislabeled as merlot. In the late 1800s, phylloxera, an aphid-like, root-devouring insect, decimated carmenère throughout Europe. But thanks to Chile’s relative geographic isolation, the imported vines endured. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that DNA testing confirmed the Chilean grapes’ true identity.

After we toured the winery, Garcia led us to an underground tasting room. She had pulled three 2021 varietals to try: cabernet sauvignon, carmenère, and syrah. The cab was “young but lovely,” she said with relief. “Two weeks ago, we had a sample that was awful.” The syrah was less tannic, much smoother. My favorite was the carmenère — light and dangerously drinkable.

What we tasted would never be bottled as is: Vik sells only blends. During our stay, the winemakers were still creating the 2021 vintages, some of which would be aged in oak harvested from the property and released in the coming years. “We are trying to find the best expression of what is Chilean,” Garcia said.

From Vik, we drove north to Santiago. Buildings throughout the capital’s historic center still bear the marks of the political protests of recent years — including graffiti about socioeconomic inequality, Indigenous rights, and women’s rights. The city may still be struggling, but it’s also still dynamic and creative.

That was evident at Boragó, a high-end restaurant in the gracious suburb of Vitacura, where chef Rodolfo Guzmán has won global acclaim for his celebration of Chilean biodiversity and Indigenous heritage. A meal at Boragó is a parade of unusual ingredients and techniques: I laughed when the server filled our glasses with “water from the rainforest.” Guzmán later used root of kollof, a type of bull kelp, for an umami-rich broth served with sea asparagus and a charred slice of pink tomato native to centralChile.

Even when the dishes sounded familiar, the presentations weren’t. Yes, there was a tostada, but it was made of grape leaves that somehow had become crunchy and salty. Mariscal, a traditional shellfish soup, was reimagined as a savory crème brûlée with pink clams and a shatteringly crisp top. The tasting menu shifts with the seasons, but one dish stays: Patagonian lamb, slow-roasted and basted in its own fat for at least 14 hours. Our juicy cuts sat on a daub of tangy fig jam. Next to that was an edible tree-branch sculpture, painstakingly crafted from Chilean truffle and fig. An unexpected bonus: the lamb was paired with the 2015 Vik Millahue red.

Guzmán grew up during Chile’s economic boom in the 1980s and 90s. “People would say, ‘Native ingredients? Those are cheap things,’ ” he said. “People wanted foreign cuisines.” He was no different: he trained in Spain, under Andoni Aduriz at his gastronomic temple, Mugaritz, before returning home and opening Boragó. Though he learned avant-garde methods at Mugaritz, Guzmán wanted Boragó “to be more rustic, more attached to old Chile,” he said. He crisscrossed the country, collecting ancestral knowledge by interviewing farmers and tasting the wild. The first time he held a loyo, a large, porcini-like mushroom that the Mapuche traditionally roast in embers, he said, “I thought it was the most marvelous thing ever.”

Boragó initially flopped. “For the first six years, we were on the verge of bankruptcy,” he said. Then, in 2012, the noted food critic Andrea Petrini dined there. “He said to me, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ ” Guzmán recalled. The next year, Boragó made the inaugural World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for Latin America. “The day before, the restaurant was totally empty,” he said. “The next day, there wasn’t a single empty chair.”

The accolade allowed Guzmán to continue showcasing Chile’s under-sung culinary heritage, especially “the seafood that nobody else was cooking, the seaweed that nobody else pays attention to,” he said. Ingredients include a type of succulent Guzmán calls a sea strawberry, because “it smells like a strawberry and tastes like a strawberry, except salty.” During my meal, sea strawberry starred in a salty-sweet dessert, paired with caramelized luche seaweed and served in a bowl carved from an aged melon.

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In 2016, Guzmán opened a lab with the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile that is building a database of Indigenous ingredients. The wild, he believes, is an underutilized treasure chest of foods that could help solve hunger: nutrient-rich seaweeds (“we have hundreds of them, but very few are used”), salt-tolerant plants like sea strawberry (“they require very little water”), even fungi (“if you drag your finger through the leaves on the forest floor, you wouldn’t believe how amazing it tastes”).

In 2021, Boragó was named the No. 1 most sustainable restaurant by the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, and this year placed No. 29 on its World’s 50 Best list. Fame has kept the restaurant’s 54 seats consistently full, while also funding the research and supporting its network of farmers, fishermen, and foragers.

While Vik and Boragó cast compelling visions for Chile’s future, I wanted to meet local makers and touch the land. For that, we headed back to the countryside.

We flew south from Santiago to Temuco, the capital of the Araucanía region — and the Mapuche heartland. Then we drove 90 minutes west until we reached the home of Isolina Huenulao, one of Chile’s few Mapuche winemakers.

Huenulao once grew vegetables, but in 2013, at age 59, she pivoted. She won an apprenticeship with a veteran vintner and, on a steep slope adjacent to the century-old orchard of apple, quince, and pear established by her grandfather, she planted grapes. Six years later, Viña Wuampuhue debuted its first vintage.

“I’m innovating,” Huenulao said as we sipped her beautifully crisp sparkling pinot noir. Her farm sits just 10 miles from the Pacific, and the effects of climate change, she said, are apparent. Though fog still visits most mornings, she said, “there is less rain, it is not as cold, and we have more sunny days now.” Growing grapes, sheadded, “would have been crazy before.”

While winemaking isn’t traditional to the Mapuche, she farms according to kimün, a catchall word for ancestral wisdom. “It’s how we used to live when there were no mobile phones, when we were around the fire,” she said. Kimün is attuned to the rhythms of nature. Pruning, she explained, always happens under la luna menguante, or the waning moon.

In 2022, Huenulao’s sparkling pinot noir — she produces just 1,000 bottles a year — won a gold medal at the Catad’Or World Wine Awards, Latin America’s most prestigious viniculture contest. She has had offers to export, but she likes selling directly from her farmstead, and not just for the better margins. Huenulao loves to entertain. That day, she served the wine with shrimp and cheese empanadas; ceviche of kollof, the same kelp Guzmán uses at Boragó; and an ever-present motherly smile. “I prefer for people to know who made the wine,” she said.

The next morning we went hiking in Villarrica National Park, about 100 miles southeast of Viña Wuampuhue, on the Chile-Argentina border. We might as well have been on another planet: the odd, top-heavy araucaria trees dappling our path looked like giant, feathery umbrellas drawn by Dr. Seuss. The tree is a prehistoric relic; some of its closest relatives are found in Australia — remnants of an age before the continents separated.

The araucaria — pehuén in Mapudungun, the Mapuche language — is so vital to the people of this region that they call themselves Pehuénche, the araucaria people. For millennia, itsstarchy seeds have been a key source of sustenance. Today the tree is threatened by overharvesting and the planting of fast-growing pine forlumber.

Post-hike, we drove to the town of Curarrehue for a cooking lesson with Yessica Antipichún, who runs the restaurant Matetun. She invited me to grind araucaria seeds with a hand mill to make flour. With that flour, we made dough for sopaipilla, a deep-fried bread served with pebre, Chilean salsa with cherry tomatoes, hot peppers, cilantro, and oregano.

As we cooked, Antipichún told me that her Pehuénche father married a non-Mapuche woman, breaking tradition. It’s one reason she didn’t grow up speaking Mapudungun and still isn’t fluent. “At school, they’re teaching the kids now, but twenty years ago, they didn’t,” she said. “It’s still more difficult to have a Mapuche surname than a Spanish one.”

After living for a time in Santiago, Antipichún returned home and reconnected with her roots. Today, she leads Zomo Ngen (“Spirit of Woman”), a cooperative of women who cook ancestral foods, produce traditional crafts, and teach visitors about Mapucheculture. In summertime, Antipichún’s restaurant, which is upstairs from Zomo Ngen’s shop, serves lunch seven days a week; when someone asks, she’ll offer cooking classes. As we sautéed leeks with digüeñes, orange-and-white mushrooms that grow on beech trees, she mentioned that few of her guests are Chilean. Foreigners are more interested in Mapuche culture, she said, and she laments the alienation she feels from her own country: “I feel more Mapuche than Chilean.”

The Mapuche see connection everywhere: around the table, through storytelling, in nature itself. Rivers aren’t just rivers. They’re the earth’s veins, carrying snowmelt from the mountains above to replenish the lakes below.

To experience that connection ourselves, we boarded an inflatable raft at andBeyond Vira Vira, a luxury resort that sits on a forested estate, to float the Liucura River. The water was remarkably clear: we glimpsed trout and king salmon, which return to spawn every year. These fish, too, signify change. European settlers introduced the trout for fishing, while the salmon escaped from aquaculture operations on the coast. Mapuche people rarely eat them; they’re viewed as ecological invaders.

As we floated around one bend, we caught sight of a volcano where spirits are said to reside: Rucapillán. The guide told me it last erupted in 2015. Some locals believe that volcanic activity reflects the spirits’ anger. We saw smoke puffing from the top — a sign, perhaps.

One morning at the end of our trip, under a sky still ablaze with stars, we drove to Rucapillán’s base with our lead guide, Augustin Landeta. We couldn’t see the mountain, but a distant red smear — molten lava in the crater — told us which way to go. Before we began hiking, Landeta said that we had to ask the spirits’ permission. We formed a circle around a ceremonial fire and paused for silent meditation. Then we began our trudge up some4,000 feet.

The higher we went, the trickier the terrain. Weclambered over boulders and traversed the slippery gravel left by long-ago lava flows. Mid morning, we rested on a small plateau carpeted with ground-hugging shrubs. One of Landeta’s deputies, Osiel Aqueveque, plucked some white berries and handed them to me to taste. I remembered how Chef Guzmán had warned me about poisonous berries. Sensingmy doubt, Aqueveque said reassuringly: “These are delicious.” They were — chaura, as they’re known, are a bit tangy, a bit sweet.

As we inched uphill, younger hikers swept past us. Five hours in, we reached the edge of a glacier, about 7,800 feet above sea level. The ice looked like a giant slab of craggy Roquefort, white deeply veined with blue. (I was hungry.) Aqueveque helped us strap on crampons and taught us how to wield ice axes before guiding us across the glacier with constant directives: Ice ax here. Step there. Jump over that crevasse.

Just as Aqueveque said we could climb no farther — summiting had been prohibited because of volcanic activity — he spotted a black smudge in the sky. “Condor!” he said, pointing. “Do you see? Above that mountain.” I followed his finger eastward, spotted the condor, and just as quickly lost it against the surrounding peaks. But then, as my eyes adjusted, another blackspeck grew larger, then another, then another. Soon, Icould see six Andean condors. They rode the thermals, circling, spiraling, and diving.

The Mapuche see the condor as an agent of renewal. The majestic bird, which appears on Chile’s national crest, is believed to embody four key virtues: wisdom, justice, kindness, and discipline. To see a condor soar is to be reminded of how these virtues can bless the land below and all who inhabit it.

Aqueveque smiled as we watched the condors carve the sky. “Asign,” he said softly.

In that place, in that moment, everything seemed possible.

Peumayen.

Where to Stay

andBeyond Vira Vira

A 34-acre estate in Chile’s Lake District with six suites in the main lodge, 12 riverfront villas, an organic farm, and a cheese factory.

Hotel Antumalal

This Bauhaus-style property on the shores of Lake Villarrica is a great base for exploring the area.

The Singular Santiago

A boutique hotel in thecentral Lastarria neighborhood, a short walk to many cafés and galleries.

Vik Chile

Vik Chile's 22 art-filled rooms andseven bungalows havestunning views oftheMillahue valley.

Where to Eat

Boragó

Rodolfo Guzmán serves wildly imaginative cuisine using Native ingredients athis highly acclaimed Santiago restaurant.

Matetun

Run by a women’s cooperative, this restaurant in the town of Curarrehue offers home-style Mapuche fare.

The Pavilion

Visitors to the Vik can have lunch at this glass-walled structure, which serves modern Chilean cuisine made from produce grown in the winery’s organic garden.

What to Do

Cook at Matetun.

Learn to make Mapuche dishes with Yessica Antipichún, who runs a restaurant in the town ofCurarrehue.

Hike Rucapillán.

A licensed guide is required to climb the volcano. My daylong hike was organized by Zenit Travel, which provided all gear, including boots and ice axes.

Sip at Viña Wuampuhue.

Sample a sparkling pinot noir made by Isolina Huenulao, a Mapuche winemaker, at her farmstead in the Cautín Valley.

How to Book

Contact T+L A-List advisor Jean Sanz of JSB Journeys, who is based in Argentina and specializes in bespoke South American itineraries.