After spending the morning at Concha y Toro winery, it was time for a lunch break. Lonely Planet recommended the nearby restaurant, La Vaquita Echá, and it turned out to be just the sort of road-side country diner we were looking for (click here to see a YouTube video). Admittedly, the place was targeted towards tourist (evidenced by the two tour buses that were already parked there when we arrived). But there were plenty of non-tourist dining there as well, and because we were there mid-week, the dining room was only about 20% full.
" La Vaquita Echá" is a little tricky to translate. Closest translation I can render is something like, "take the little cow", but I'm still not 100% confident that that's correct. "La Vaquita" means "little cow" and "echá" is from the verb "echar", which means "to throw", but can mean a variety of different things in different context. If anyone can give me a good guess at the translation, I'd love to hear it! It's very frustrating when even the sum of knowledge on the internet does not appear to have a decent answer to my pondering (sigh).
The restaurant was in a very pastoral setting, with a rushing stream near the entry, outdoor seating and most interestingly, a mama dog laying by the entrance nursing her baby pups! We ordered empanadas de pino (beef turnovers with onions and hard-boiled egg - possibly my next cooking adventure!). There was an amazing charcoal barbecue INSIDE the restaurant (couldn't mind thinking that this would never happen in the U.S.), so I felt it appropriate to order some beef. I ordered my Lomo Tocino de Res "al punto" thinking that meant "medium", but apparently it meant something more like "rare", because that's how it arrived. The meat was undoubtably delicious, but a bit rare for my taste. Unable to finish the entire cut, I fed the scraps to our mama dog friend, who seemed very thankful for the handout.
After lunch we continued along the well-paved country road that curved up the valley among beautiful flowers and plants, occasionally following the path of a stream. The road was surprising void of other cars; we only encountered a few cyclist and pedestrians along the entire route. The sparse amount of cars was likely due to the fact that it was a Tuesday, and not many Santiagoeans made the trip to the mountains mid-week. The scenery eventually changed from lush greenery to rocky boulders and mountain peaks. We saw numerous stands advertising sweets, fruits and handicrafts, but all were closed on the day we were there (clearly, this area sees some major traffic on the weekends). As we drove deeper into the valley, there were more and more little hostels lodges and quaint looking restaurants catering to the weekend crowds that flock to the mountains each weekend from Santiago.
After about an hour of driving, the paved road turned to gravel and our pace slowed considerably. But the views continued to become more extraordinary, so we pressed on, stopping along the way to take photos and admire the towering mountains (tinted purple and green by the mineral content). We passed several heaving duty truck coming from the opposite direction, likely filled with copper ore from the mines located farther up in the valley.
To be continued...
The backseat of that truck sure was comfortable!
ReplyDeleteI can make those Empanadas! My husband loves the ones he had in San Juan (around Mendoza) and he asked me to copy a recipe we ate once.
ReplyDeleteBest. Food. Ever.
I dough is ridiculously hard to perfect unless you make it with lard. I am not that hard core, but the filling is amazing.
The hardest part in making his is that he likes green olives with the pit - which were hard to find in Arkansas.