Now this was indeed unexpected.
While drinking pineapple juice and fervently discussing food with the Swedes on Easter Islands - it came to my attention that there exists in Santiago a sacred place. A place so incredible, I couldn't imagine it would ever exist.
Como Agua Para Chocolate restaurant. Oh my. Now if you don't know what I'm talking about...SHAME ON YOU. Like Water For Chocolate is an amazing book, combining two passions - food and love - set in Mexico early 1900s I think (also became a movie). Written by Laura Esquivel in the 80s, this book became like a bible for me - we even had my Mum read a part of it at our wedding! And there's a restaurant dedicated to this sacred book. And we went. Last night. Me and the Swedes. My fellow foodies. All frocked up and somewhere fab to go!
Well. I wish I could post like a million pics, the restaurant is done up all early Mexican, but still quite chic, and the food was divine. We started with Suspiro de Amor (Love's Breath) which was light crispy pastry layers with cubes of tomato, avocado and every imaginable seafood in between with a tangy super sauce...we all shared....ohhhhhhhhhhhh so lovely.
But the highlight - and I hate to say it but the main was even better than dessert (and dessert was gooooooooooooooood)- was Diego and Frida's Love Stew...and that's what you can see above...oh myyyyyy...if you read the previous post you would know I had a stew for lunch and it was amazing...well this one was even better. It was a huge pot of smokey salty broth with smoked pork ribs, chorizo, all sorts of seafood, chicken and veges...bloody hell, I wish I could have bathed in it. Imagine a whole warm bath of this stew and just lying in it, soaking up those wonderful smokey aromas...wonderful...who needs a herb bath when you could have a Diego and Frida's Love Stew Bath???? You could have a loaf of bread as your sponge and instead of washing yourself with it, just dip it in and eat it...mmmmmm.
The pot of stew you see is for two people, and we shared it between 3, and there was still half left! Enough for a foot bath anyway.
We ate all this food with a Chilean chardonnay - but you know me, I don't take much notice of wine, so I'm afraid I can't comment, other than saying it was nice.
But dessert is something I do take notice of. And being in the sharing mood, we all shared dessert - we chose two. The first was your usual chocolate fondue (Chocolate Caliente) with fruits including cactus fruit, the second was something quite special, Torta de Tres Leches (Cake of three milks). Now this is something to behold, and if you follow me on Twitter you would see a pic there (and I don't know how to post two pics on the one post, so go there and check it out).
This dessert is about four layers of wonderful cake, with different creams in between sandwiching it together - but the best part was that the whole cake was covered in gooey marshmallow....you know that raw meringue stuff, just a little baked in the oven....with strawberries on top. Oh there was silence at that table as three frenzied foodies tucked into their Torta de Tres Leches! Silence followed by Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Then more silence. It was really really good. Oh and I almost forgot the wonderful burnt toffee chip sticking out of it. I offered to devour that.
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