Picorocos and Donde Agusto

The fresh seafood that attacks you.

The selection of shellfish and fish available is astounding.

Donde Agusto greeting everyone that walks in.

A body-less shark eating fish heads. Off color fisherman's humor.

It might seem strange to dedicate an entire post to one thing when I dedicated the previous post to an entire week, however, anything less would not do the Mercado Central justice.

The Mercado Central is, without a doubt, the best place to buy and eat seafood in Santiago. Americans, especially ones like me who live in the Midwest, have no concept of what fresh ocean fish and shellfish taste like, since most of what we receive has at one time been frozen. When you walk into the Mercado Central, housed within a building designed and built by Gustave Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame, you enter a completely new world. The smell of the sea immediately invades your nostrils and the sight strung up sharks stops you in your tracks. Vendors eagerly harass anyone walking by to either buy shellfish or holler out catcalls to the girls. When I mentioned fresh seafood before, what I really meant is that everything there was either caught that day or the day before, or actually arrived there alive. All the shellfish were definitely still alive- at one stop I touched a crab thinking it was dead only to nearly lose a finger to the bastard. 

After walking around and seeing all the different and weird seafood, we went to the most famous restaurant at the market, Donde Agusto. Because of my gringo appearance, he immediately side-stepped my uncle and greeted me, asking me where I'm from. After a response in spanish, he seemed taken and took us upstairs to a table with an excellent view of the whole market.

For lunch, we all dined on a variety of appetizers: seafood ceviche, sea urchin tongues, abalone (a large shellfish that must be beaten to become softer), centolla (South American king crab), and my favorite- picorocos (sea barnacles). For the main course we all had fried Congrio, or conger eel, with fries and a few bottles of wine. Easily the best meal I've ever had in Chile, Donde Agusto is definitely the place to eat in Santiago, and for cheap. All this food for six, plus two bottles of wine was $120, a deal considering Alaskan King Crab is $25 a lb. now. 

Please enjoy these pictures, and I hope that they don't discourage any of you from visiting me, because if you come, I will make you try these things and I guarantee that you'll like them.