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Today was a day to celebrate Chilean cuisine and drink. We’re back on land for the day at lovely Puerto Montt, where the boats try to out-color the homes. We joined a cruise line excursion called A Taste of Chile: Fresh fusion.

Our group of 24 started out in a little bus to the local Angelmo Fish Market, where we meet Chef Richard Knobloch, a German-born chef with a restaurant in nearby Puerto Varas. Chef Richard took us around in the market to buy the food he needed to prepare us a sumptuous lunch. This is both a fish and produce market, so everything he needs was there. The venders sometimes offered samples for us to try or sniff; cheese, blue berries, smoked red pepper flakes and fresh hot peppers, to name a few. At the fish market area, Chef Richard selected several whole Hake fish, mussels, soft-shelled clams, shucked and cooked razor clams, and Sea Squirts. Produce selected included Chilean native multi-colored potatoes, green beans, something that translates to Sweet Cucumbers, kelp, seaweed, big red onions and garlic, blueberries, and cartons of multi-colored eggs. Plush fresh herbs and lemons / limes. It was great fun following him around, asking questions, buying little bags of seasoning and nuts.

Then on to Puerto Varas and Chef Richard’s “restaurant.” According to Chef Richard, during the pandemic in 2020-2021, all restaurants were ordered shut down. So of course that meant there were “hidden” restaurants. Los Pinis Cabanas remained open renting small cabins, but hidden in the back of the lot was an unmarked building with a large room. This is the “restaurant.”

All that magical food was prepared in this tiny kitchen area. While his team prepared the raw ingredients, we were treated with Chilean Pisco Sours. Pisco is a Peruvian liquor considered a non-aged brandy. Peru uses lime juice in their Pisco Sours, while Chile uses lemon juice. A few of us also helped a little in the preparation: broke the beans, debearded the mussels, and helped open clams. As various raw ingredients were prepped, we had a chance to taste them. It was all the more exciting tasting the ingredients without knowing how they’ll end up!

Meal preparation took almost 2 hours, but we were kept entertained with tastings, drinks, and demonstrations throughout. The clams were sprinkled with cheese and butter, then baked. They were one of our early appetizers. One of the demonstrations was how to prepare fish stock from the fish carcasses. The carcasses are first soaked in apple vinegar before put in the pot with vegetables (already reduced in a pressure cooker). And then we all sat down family style for the first of five courses. Wine flowed throughout lunch, we had the local red blend of Malbec and Pinot Noir.

Here are some of my reactions:

• Kelp tastes like whatever it is cooked in. No flavor raw, just mushy
• Sea Squirts were firm but gritty (like sand) and a bit bitter. No need to try them again (look it up to see what kind of animal they are)
• Sweet Cucumbers are a local favorite, tasting like a hybrid of melon and cucumber – very sweet
• Pisco Sours are my new favorite warm weather drink
• The raspberries were picked from the bushes right outside the kitchen! Delicious

Two hours later, filled to the brim, we gave our thanks to Chef Richard and each of his staff, and seemingly rolled onto the bus back to the ship. We were so full, we had to skip the St Patrick’s Day dinner of Corned Beef onboard.

What a wonderful meal and amazing experience. My only disappointment was we were unable to see the two cinder cone volcanos across the lake in Puerto Varas due to cloud cover. So close and not seeing them!