What People Sell in Santiago
By: Talyah White
Photos: Amy Sullivan
The Mercado Central in Santiago, Chile showcases a wide variety of fish and shellfish that are native to Chile and the pacific waters of its coastline, which runs along more than half of the western part of South America.
There are a number of restaurants in the center of the market that offer breakfast, lunch and early dinner specials that feature a lot of this fresh seafood.
Fresh market fish of the day.
Many of the popular fish, including the Patagonian toothfish, known as the “Chilean Seabass,” are available on a daily basis.
While some of the smaller restaurants buy their fish and shellfish directly from the market vendors, others like Augusto Vasquez, who owns Augusto’s, the largest restaurant in the market, must order seafood from outside vendors that send him hundreds of pounds of fresh seafood on a weekly basis.
“We see over 300 people a day on weekdays and over 1,000 people on weekends so it is impossible to buy from the small vendors here,” Vasquez says. “This is what my father had to do before me and now I have to. But I’d like to think we know what we’re doing since we have been doing it for over 30 years.”
The largest restaurant in the market, Augusto’s, a popular place for locals and touristsalike. The restaurant has been operating in the Mercado Central for over thirty years.
Vasquez says that there are three popular items on his menu that attract tourists and locals alike.
“For tourists it is the seabass everyone wants that. The tourists with more money love to order the king crab and take pictures and selfies with it,” Vasquez says. “They may not even eat it. The locals on the other hand order the Congrio fish and they eat all of it. They clean the plate.”
The restaurant serves the Colorado, or red Congrio, the more common of the two types of Congrioin the Chilean seas.
Congrio was also the fish of choice for world renowned Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.
Neruda once wrote an ode to a dish that features Congrio. This Oda al Caldillo de Congrio inspired the Communist party of Chile to serve the dish to the Chilean press and media at their annual event.
Local fisherman describing the types of fish he caught earlier that day.
Vasquez says that for a lot of people the taste and the quality are most important when choosing seafood.
“Price is also a factor especially for locals who are not splurging on vacation like some of the tourists,” he says.
Local school teacher Victor Lopez, who has been visiting the market for years, says seafood at the market is reasonably priced.
“I come all the time for mussels,” Lopez says. “They are my favorite, and they cost me 700 pesos for a whole kilo [or about two pounds]. That is a great bargain for fresh seafood.”
Local fisherman showing off the octopus he caught hours prior to bringing it to the market.
A glimpse of the hundreds of pounds of fresh seafood the market sells on a weekly basis.
Economics also plays a major role in all aspects of this industry. Local fisherman Miguel Soto says this is his only means of providing for his family.
“I have no schooling past basic,” Soto says. “I fish and sell at the market to feed my family and it is an honest living. My family eats much of what I catch and I enjoy being out on the waters and sharing the great food with the local people and the people who are visiting.”
The market is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.