Southern Comfort

In Chile’s La Araucanía and Los Lagos regions, Betsy Andrews falls for the hearty cuisine of the Indigenous Mapuche people

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…

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Conde Nast Traveler (Digital) - 1 Issue, January/February 2025

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