Eating for $5 in Santiago, the Chacarero Sandwich

In a place like Santiago, a country sandwiched between the mountains and the ocean, you’d think that seafood would be a good bet. And it is a fabulous bet, in every way but one. It’s not budget-friendly. The cheapest fish meal you’ll eat will be fried, have bones in it, be served beside some soggy frenchfries and still run you close to $8 US in most places, and closer to $11 or $12 if it’s done a la plancha (grilled).

Enter the sandwich. Chilean sandwiches come in many forms, though you can almost always rely on either cheese or meat, sometimes avocado and stringbeans.

Stringbeans?

Yes, stringbeans.

The first time I encountered what I have come to refer to as stringbean slaw on a sandwich, I was stymied. Where was my crunchy lettuce? Turns out I was in Chile, and if you’re a sandwich lover and you find yourself in this stringbean of a country, with any luck at all, you’ll find some on your sandwich, too.

The chacarero is a sandwich you’ll find all over Chile. It’s grilled strips of beef, vaguely fajita style, peeled sliced tomatoes, and a healthy haystack of yes, you guessed it, shredded, cooked stringbeans on bread. Like many sandwiches in Chile, you probably won’t want to pick it up with your hands, but rather, do like the locals do, and grab a (steak) knife and fork to attack your chacarero with.

All over the country, in informal restaurants like the ubiquitous fuentes de soda (bars), and also in sandwich shops which are also often called fuentes, such as chains called Fuente Alemana, Fuente Suiza, and where we got this one, Fuente Mardoqueo in Santiago’s Barrio Yungay, you’ll find people chowing down on one of these sandwiches, for lunch, for dinner, after a beer. The time is nearly always right for a chacarero (though if you order one for breakfast you’ll get some raised eyebrows).

If the juicy grass-fed steak and meaty garden-fresh tomatoes don’t get you, you might fall in love with the well-cooked stringbeans, or the either pan frica (like a coarser hamburger bun) or marraqueta (like french bread) that the sandwich comes on. If you’re into spicy, you might load it up with ají, Chile’s thicker (and less spicy) version of tobasco sauce that comes in containers that look suspiciously like ketchup (careful there!).

At a place like Fuente Mardoqueo, a small sandwich (which is gigantic) will set you back around $6.50, and a large, which is easily split with a friend is about $7.50, but you can easily find a chacarero in other spots for less, though the quality of the meat and tomatoes may go down a bit. The fluctuating dollar vs. the Chilean Peso will also determine the relative cost of the sandwich. Fuente Mardoqueo’s claim to fame is the twelve different sauces they have available for your sandwich, and the kitchy collection of old radios, teacups, clocks and sewing machines that grace the walls. Oh, and the incredible chacarero. The translation of which would be “farmer’s sandwich.” Now, with stringbeans.

Yes, stringbeans.