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I wrote this a few months back, right when the restaurant opened. A delicious side of modern China-Chile relations!
Madam Tusan, a Chinese-Peruvian restaurant, opened a few months ago at Parque Arauco, an upscale mall that looks like it could be in Southern California.
We visited the restaurant after reading this tempting review in the September 30, 2011 edition of Wikén, the Friday magazine of Chile’s most prominent newspaper, El Mercurio, I translated parts of it into English.
Chifa Cuisine Arrives in Chile: Fusion of Chinese and Peruvian Gastronomy. by Bárbara Muñoz S.
Cebiche con wantanes? Not only is it possible, it’s delicious. The tasty mix of Peruvian and Chinese cuisine – sweet-and-sour, intense, and with an important historical weight – has just landed in Chile, in the Boulevard of Parque Arauco, by the hand of Gastón Acurio and his ultimate whim: Madam Tusan.
When he was a child, Gastón Acurio – today a super-famous chef, mega-businessman, and face of the Peruvian gastronomic revolution – asked for “una chifa” for his birthday. His parents thought he wanted to celebrate by eating at one of the many Chinese restaurants that existed in Lima, known as “chifas.” But what he had in mind was something else: he wanted to HAVE a chifa.
When I visited the restaurant, I spoke with Liliana Com, who was visiting from the main location in Lima to manage the Santiago location’s opening. Liliana is “tusan,” or Peruvian-born Chinese.
I asked Liliana about the derivation of the word “tusan.” Does it come from the familiar Chinese words for “earth” and “three”? Not directly, she explained; there are specific words for different generations of Japanese descendents – issei, nissei, sansei for first, second, and third generation, respectively – but not similar words for Chinese descendants, at least not in the Peruvian vernacular.
The first Chinese arrived in Peru around 1854, when slavery was abolished and landowners needed a new labor source.
The El Mercurio piece describes how this migration shaped Peruvian cuisine.
“Many of those Chinese stayed to live forever and never stopped eating their food. In fact, part of their payment was in rice,” explains Liliana. The combination of Chinese techniques and Peruvian ingredients gave rise to chifa cuisine. As time passed, the immigrants and their families installed themselves on Capón Street, in the center of Lima, which developed into a Chinese neighborhood. “In this time the chifas in Lima were opium dens and a kind of red-light district where the ‘madams’ reigned over the places,” tells Liliana. From that comes the name Madam Tusan.
When I pulled this newspaper clipping from my bag, Liliana pointed out that El Mercurio misquoted her. She clarified that the Chinese neighborhood was “not a place for families,” but the Chinese restaurants were NOT opium dens and brothels. She became quite animated when she said this, as it clearly touched a nerve.
So, you might be wondering, how was the food? Delicious!
My companion and I started off with fresh juice (the restaurant had yet to receive its liquor license.)
Then one of the dozens of attentive waiters (unusual in Chile – this country is not known for customer service) presented three types of chili sauce. The spiciest one featured crushed peppers from Jilin, China. The second mixed Peruvian chilies and crushed ginger. The third was hoisin con rocoto: a blend of hoisin, the sweet sauce that traditionally accompanies Peking Duck, and rocoto, a Peruvian spice paste.
Next we enjoyed the butifarra china, a plate of three delicate sandwiches filled with pork, cilantro, julienned vegetables and hoisin con rocoto on steamed buns.
The Pollo Bruce Lee – which came with a warning of solo para valientes – reminded me of the gong bao ji ding (chicken with peanuts, chilies, and other vegetables) that I ate so often in China.
Our most elaborate dish was camarones rellenos a la naranja, enormous shrimp stuffed with almonds, battered, fried and topped with a sweet-and-sour orange sauce and green onions. It reminded me of a dish you might find at an upscale, fusion-inspired restaurant in San Francisco.
Our final dish was a simple chaufa con pollo, fried rice with chicken and eggs. It was tasty and simple, and closer to home cooking than the complex dishes that sat beside it.
My Chilean dining companion found the food spicier than what he normally eats. (Chilean food is relatively bland: lots of bread, sandwiches, and barbecue.) But he really enjoyed the mix of flavors and the overall experience.
He also loved the design of the red leather chairs.
Overall, our experience at Madam Tusan lived up to its tantalizing review, and showed a stylish, modern, and globalized face of China in Chile.
Madam Tusan. Boulevard del Parque Arauco. Avenida Presidente Kennedy 5413, Las Condes, Santiago. Call for reservations: 02-2190152. Lunch for two, including non-alcoholic beverages and tip: 30.000 Chilean pesos (roughly $60.)
I spent Christmas at home in San Francisco, and wanted to come back to Chile to ring in 2012. So I booked a one-way ticket on Aeromexico, which happened to be the cheapest one-way flight I could find, and included a 16-hour layover in Mexico City (roughly 7am-11pm).
Despite the fact that I couldn’t get much sleep on the 1am flight from San Francisco to Mexico City, I enjoyed my layover adventure.
Before I left home, I downloaded Jim Johnston’s Mexico City: An Opinionated Guide for the Curious Traveler onto the Kindle app on my iPod Touch. Very helpful!
After exchanging $100 in cash for Mexican pesos and grabbing a much-appreciated cup of coffee, I got a city map and found the official taxi stalls. I had heard horror stories about unlicensed cabs in Mexico City and chose to play it safe.
I asked the driver to take me to the Zócalo.
Zócalo, early morning with Christmas decorations.
Flags adorn a gorgeous church, not far from the Zócalo
Huevos divorciados, a classic Mexican breakfast. Two fried eggs, one with red sauce, one with green. Served up with chilaquiles and a much-needed café con leche.
I strolled in and out of several pretty churches.
Such pretty light!
I then walked to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, where there was a special four-gallery exhibit of sculptures by Gustavo Perez. Each piece juxtaposed the whiteness of porcelain with the blackness and unequaled plasticity of black mud from Oaxaca. So striking.
I then followed my guidebook’s advice and took the subway to Colonia Condesa, an upscale residential neighborhood. I got slightly confused on the subway and needed to backtrack more than once, but I was glad to have plenty of time and no one following my directions. I think the subway was much less crowded than usual, since I was there during a holiday week.
Pretty house in Colonia Condesa
Dogwash-Mobile! What a brilliant idea!
"To sustain this park demands great expenses. Cooperate with us by not permitting its mistreatment." A different rhetorical tactic than I've seen at parks in other places.
My main goal during my long layover was to find the authentic Mexican food that I was spoiled with as a child. Though it did not equal Nana Petra's famous cauliflower casserole, this gordita was tasty.
Not long after that gordita, I got caught in the rain. In the dark. Exhausted. Umbrella-less, I scurried through the rain until I finally found an open restaurant (a lot of places were closed since most of the city was on vacation.) There I ate a decent strawberry and goat cheese salad and asked the waitress to call me a cab to the airport.
I arrived at the airport with ample time to browse through Duty Free’s selection of fine tequila. I chose a brand called Suave.
Overall, I enjoyed my layover in Mexico City, and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to save money and enjoy some nice art, architecture, and tacos.
If you have a long layover in Mexico City, you should also read this post: Mexico City – All the Fun You Can Have in 10 Hours by Jack and Jill Travel the World
Thanks to a thoughtful recommendation from Elise Bauer, author Scott Seligman sent me a review copy of The Cultural Revolution Cookbook, which is available on Amazon.com.
I loved the book’s artful explanation of how disastrous government policy brought forth creative self-reliance.
For most Chinese who lived through the Cultural Revolution, the very idea of a history of eating during that cheerless decade sounds like an oxymoron. It was an era in which the traditional food culture of China – which, according to an old Chinese saying, is on a par with heaven – went into near-total eclipse. Shortages were the order of the day, and one was lucky to consume as many calories as one burned on any given day. The art of cooking, in the sense of a body of collected wisdom about ingredients, seasonings and preparation methods, was summarily abandoned and was, in fact, criticized as a capitalist remnant. People ate whatever they could get their hands on, and there was almost never enough to go around.
…
Most would think of their time in the countryside as a disastrous waste of a decade, but that view told only part of the story. The experience had also been formative, and they came back more mature and self-reliant. They came back with lifelong friendships, with skills they had never dreamed they would acquire and with a hunger for learning and improving their lots in life that would lead many to great achievements. And many came back with the knowledge of Chinese countryside cooking with its flavorful and wholesome recipes that would be with them for the rest of their lives. (9, 12)
The time I spent in China was infinitely more prosperous and harmonious than the Cultural Revolution, but I definitely sensed this influence. My friends and students were the sons and daughters of the Cultural Revolution generation, filled with the “hunger for learning and improving their lots in life.” And of course I tasted many of the dishes in this book in hole-in-the-wall restaurants and friends’ kitchens.
Here in Chile, I decided on the most obvious (and delicious!) way to review this cookbook: testing the recipes!
The first time I opened the book, I breezed through it all in one sitting, right before dinnertime. It made me so hungry! I wanted to see what I could make from what was already in my kitchen.
Scrambled Eggs and Tomato. The photos in The Cultural Revolution Cookbook make even the most humble recipe look like a delicacy, and this was no exception.
I ate this dish so many times in China, especially at the restaurant across the street from the front gate of our university in Jiaxing. I think it was the first dish I learned how to say: “fan xie chau dan.”
But I’d never made it myself. I was surprised to see that the recipe included several tablespoons of sugar. The combination of sugar, salt, and oil transformed these simple ingredients into a tasty memory from China.
Each recipe page has a quaint Cultural Revolution anecdote like this one, which accompanies the Scrambled Eggs and Tomato recipe.
I served the eggs and tomatoes alongside a warm and chicken-less version of Cold Sesame Noodles with Chicken: spaghetti, garlic, cilantro, cooking oil, crushed chili pepper (I used merkén, a Chilean spice that seems quite similar to Chinese chilies… a local touch!), soy sauce, vinegar, and sesame oil. All ingredients that I already had in my kitchen!
I positioned the plate on top of a book of essays on the future of China-Chile relations. I like how this picture communicates the dish’s trans-Pacific provenance.
A few days later, I made a Chinese “banquet” for four. This time I shopped for ingredients at the neighborhood fruit stand and butcher shop.
Inspired by the book’s recipe for Pork with Green and Red Pepper Shreds, I made a Xinjiang-style beef noodle soup with vegetables. I ended up adding tomatoes, beer, cumin, cilantro, and several other ingredients that were not in the recipe. It was quite tasty.
HINT: If you’re buying meat from a butcher, ask the butcher to cut it up for you. This saved me both time and the chore of scrubbing raw meat juice off my cutting boards. A win-win!
We also made cucumber salad, one of my all-time favorite Chinese restaurant dishes, and a second round of scrambled eggs with tomatoes, served with a really nice bottle of Carmenere that my parents left behind after a winery tour during their visit. A lovely finish to a lovely evening!
Overall, The Cultural Revolution Cookbook reminded me that Chinese cooking can be simple, inexpensive, unintimidating, and delicious. It does not require special trips to unfamiliar stores for ingredients you’ve never bought before. All you really need is fresh ingredients, simple kitchen supplies, and a healthy dose of China nostalgia.
All images from The Cultural Revolution Cookbook except for the shot of my plate of food with the Chilean and Chinese flags.
Following an enthusiastic recommendation from professional photographer Matt Wilson, we enjoyed a very special meal at Rapa Nui’s Kotaro Japanese Bistro.
The restaurant is on the same street as the airport. I’m not sure of the name of the street, but Hanga Roa, the only town on the island, has only one airport and only one Japanese restaurant, so it’s not hard to find.
The light inside the restaurant was absolutely gorgeous, so I snapped this photo of my mama.
The decor: so beautiful! Francisco, the owner, does all the construction himself. He says that none of the island’s carpenters meet his high standards for craftsmanship. He is Chilean but spent many years working in Japan. His mannerisms seemed more Japanese than Chilean, and he spoke flawless English, as well as several other languages.
The restaurant has just three tables, and first night we tried to eat there, they were full. So we came back the following night.
We all ordered the set meal. First came sashimi and noodle soup, followed by white fish with ginger sauce, sauteed vegetables, and rice.
Our meals were 12.000 RMB per person (excluding drinks and tip) which is about on par with an entree at another restaurant on the island. I thought was a great value, considering the quality of the food and experience. Easter Island is expensive! It’s far from everything, and all supplies arrive via boat or a single daily LAN flight. But it’s absolutely breathtaking, in every sense of the word, and worth the splurge!
If and when you go to Rapa Nui, after seeing the moai, be sure to check out Kotaro Japanese Bistro.
Maybe you’re thinking, whoa… Leslie has officially gone crazy. Two consecutive posts about shellfish!? I thought this was a blog about China-Chile relations!
I made this tasty risotto dish, and I think some of you might be interested in trying it. I never measure, so I can’t promise this is the world’s most precise recipe, but soupy dishes are super-forgiving.
Also, I’d really appreciate your feedback on this blog, as I prepare to launch the business that will not be called by any of these names and think about smart, non-intrusive ways to monetize my blog. Which kind of posts are your favorite? What would you like to see more of?
Now, for the cooks in the room, here’s the recipe…
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I'm Leslie and I connect entrepreneurs in Chile, China, California, and beyond — especially through translation, training, and trade. More about me.
