Sunday, January 22nd to Sunday, February 5th

After that lovely trip to Valparaíso, I spent the next little bit in Santiago with my Grandmother and Uncle, who were renting a big apartment in the República neighbourhood of Santiago. I was looking for an apartment to rent in the city myself, having elected not to find one before I started the trip. I wanted to be able to go to viewings and get a sense of the neighbourhood and the building rather than committing to renting property online, sight unseen. It was nice to spend time with my family in Santiago and it was quite convenient to have a base in the city for me to stay at while I was looking for more permanent accommodations.

Aside from Chilean cuisine which is, of course, the dominant cuisine in restaurants in Santiago, Peruvian cuisine is quite popular. Tons of Peruvian restaurants that dot the city. Now, Peruvian cuisine has some very interesting fusions with other cuisines, such as nikkei [*], Peruvian-Japanese, and chifa [†], Peruvian-Chinese. At this Peruvian restaurant, I ordered a chaufa (loanword from Cantonese chaufan), and it was pretty delicious. Chinese food is my favourite type of cuisine, shoutout to my favourite restaurant in Toronto, Magical Taste of China, the best Western Chinese food I've ever had [‡].

Although, if we flip back to Chilean cuisine now, I can show you this photo I took of Mote con huesillos, a wheat and peach drink that is ubiquitous.

I got this particular glass when I was shopping at Los Dominicos Craft Centre. I also was tempted to buy these extremely cute llama plushies. I managed to stop myself though, it would've been difficult to ship these bad boys internationally to their intended recipient due to the size of these absolute units.

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[*]	Nikkei: Some further reading on the subject from Culture Trip. One of the Nikkei restaurants mentioned by name in the article is Chotto Matte, which has a location in Toronto! I will have to check it out when I'm back.

[†]

Chifa: potentially from Cantonese 食飯喇(Jyutping: sik9 fan6 la3) meaning, "to eat cooked rice". [1] If this is at all interesting to you, and you can read Spanish (sry, lol), this citation is pretty interesting. Spanish is generally considered a prescriptivist language, due to the presence of the Real Academia Española (RAE), the Royal Academy of Spanish. It is an institution that publishes dictionaries and grammar and makes rulings on what words should be included in Spanish, and which words aren't grammatically correct. This is in contrast to English, which is considered a descriptivist language, there is no central body attempting to codify the rules and the words used. In the citation above, Dr. Víctor García de la Concha from RAE requested that the Academia Peruana de la Lengua, the Peruvian Academy of Language form a commission to validate the peruanismos, or Peruvianisms, that were entering the 22nd edition of the RAE Dictionary. This is a paper about the accepted peruanismos, which includes chifa. Another interesting one is estar para el gato, to be "for the cat" means to be sick, or doing poorly.

[‡]	No joke, I am a card-carrying member of the restaurant. Everyone should be, you pay the membership off after the first 2 dinners.

References

[1]	A. Baldoceda Espinoza, "Results of the Peruvian lexicographic proposal in the Royal Academic Dictionary" (in Spanish), BAPL, vol. 36, n.º 36, pp. 85-162, dec. 2002, doi: 10.46744/bapl.200202.003.