On the Craggy Southern Coast of Chile, Food Tells a Story

30.12.2024 - 14:59 / cntraveler.com / Cooper

Choros maltones, for which the town of Nehuentúe is famed, grow plump and sweet at the brackish mouth of the Imperial River on the coast of La Araucanía, a southern Chilean region with a large Indigenous population. These mussels get so big that they're nicknamed zapatos, or shoes. All of the divers who harvest them are men, except for Cecilia Sanhueza. She's the chef-owner of El Estuario del Maltón, one of nine restaurants in Nehuentúe's Centro Gastronómico cooperative, located on an estuary where painted dories bob.

Sanhueza founded the Centro in 2012 after securing government grants for its construction and organizing women to open their own restaurants inside it and cook whatever the town's fishermen catch. “This was a very poor town, and I saw a lot of violence against women,” she told me while setting down my bowl of winey, cilantro-laced mussels. A survivor herself, Sanhueza had been cooking on the street for a living. “No one knew how to fight for the future,” she said. “So I decided we would work together.”

Freshly caught crabs at restaurant Casa Valdés

local grouper served with spinach at Casa Valdés

The Centro has provided Nehuentúe women with jobs and the means to leave a bad situation if they need to. “Now they can have their independence,” Sanhueza explains. This change is fitting for a town named “place of resistance,” for its Mapuche opposition to conquistadors in the 1500s. Today Nehuentúe is a destination. As I dug through the bubbling cheese of a lisa machada, a creamy mullet and seafood stew, families in the Centro devoured shrimp empanadas and puffy sopaipillas. A crafts cooperative has sprung up next door, and a multicar ferry brings visitors from the larger port town of Puerto Saavedra, on the river's southern bank.

I was headed in that direction. After flying from Santiago to Temuco, one of the main jumping-off points for travelers going south into Patagonia, I'd begun driving down the Araucanía coast with a plan to hit more Mapuche towns before meeting up with the Pan-American Highway. My final destination was one of the world's most southerly vineyards, planted five years ago on Chiloé Island, in Chile's lake region, by the well-regarded Santa Cruz producer Viña Montes. This new estate is an ongoing experiment in grape growing in chilly Patagonia. Though I was eager to see how the fruit was faring, I thought I'd enjoy a movable feast along the 400 miles of ranchlands and seafood-rich shoreline I'd traverse on the way.

Llaimo Volcano in La Araucanía

An hour south of Nehuentúe, I pulled into the Llaguepulli Mapuche community on Lago Budi, where I booked a cooking class with Luzmira Calfuque. She runs Kom Che Ñi Ruka, meaning “everyone's house,” an inn and restaurant that