I’M STANDING BY PABLO NERUDA’S BAR.
Unsurprisingly, it’s as mind-bending as his surrealist
poetry—decorated with a stuffed penguin, carved wooden
fish, antique glassware, a hand sculpture, a vintage seltzer
bottle, and a sign reading “Don Pablo Est Ici,” along with
many other oddities and curiosities. Neruda was the only
person allowed behind it. He liked to play bartender,
preparing his signature cocktail, the Coquetelón. A
buzzy blend of orange juice, dry champagne, Cointreau,
and cognac, he served it over crushed ice in a chilled
champagne flute. Apparently, it could be quite deadly. It
turns out Neruda wasn’t just a Nobel Prize–winning poet;
he was also the gifter of monstrous hangovers.
His small saloon is hidden away at the back of the third
floor of his onetime home, La Sebastiana, perched on the
hills of Valparaíso, Chile, with a sublime view of the harbor
and the Pacific. As I’ve learned on my short, self-guided
tour of the five-story wonderland, the poet—who died
in 1973—loved food, writing odes to onions, artichokes,
oranges, and the “large tuna in the market.” This makes
it a fitting starting point for my trip through the writer’s
homeland, which I’m undertaking with a fellow DCist,
the celebrated chef Victor Albisu, who owns the South
American steakhouse Del Campo in Washington, DC’s
Penn Quarter, as well as a pair of Taco Bamba taquerias
in nearby Virginia.
Over the course of this week in early April—which
is autumn on the bottom half of the world—we are
aiming to eat our way through the country in search of
unique ingredients, products, and recipes, which Albisu
hopes to utilize at his restaurants. It’s a tough job, but
we’re determined to do it without snapping our belts
or overdosing on Pepto. An epic tasting-menu dinner
focused on Chilean ingredients, traditional cuisine, and
cooking techniques at Santiago’s Amadeo Bar threatens
on both counts, but we muscle through it with the kind
of professionalism that will undoubtedly cause our
cardiologists to wince when we tell them about it upon
our return.
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