Ciudad Vieja

Ciudad Vieja is a restaurant in the funky little neighborhood of Bellavista, that’s owned and operated by Chef Jose Luis Merino who also the proprietor of the very popular Ciudadano in Barrio Italia and a host of other restaurants in Chile. Ciudad Vieja specializes in gourmet sandwiches.

The menu at Ciudad Vieja sports a huge variety of sandwiches but they also have a single offering in the “burger” genre named the Gran Pilón. If you order it on “pan amasado” they actually serve up two burgers on one order. The meat was well seasoned and juicy. But the bun was slightly dry, not up to the standards of many of the other buns we sampled in the face-off. The condiments were good.

You can’t order a standard cheeseburger, so we had to do our taste test with their fancy burger with caramelized onions and blue cheese. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how it would have tasted with a big slice of cheddar cheese (although I would have ordered it just under normal conditions exactly the way they’ve built it).

The burger (or I should say burgers) were very good despite the average offering in the bread category. If you take a look at the photo you can see a small bit of fries behind the burgers. Not much there, is there? And what was there was greasy and limp. These were the worst fries we sampled in our burger joint face-off. They weren’t just average like the out of the bag variety we were served at most restaurants. They were well below average.

That said, the ambiance in this establishment was good and service was acceptable. To receive two burgers for the price of one is a value despite the shortage and poor quality of the fries.

Luckily, the meat patty and the low price for so much food kept Ciudad Vieja in the running for top honors in our Burger Joint Face-off despite the substandard French fries and boring bun. An overall score of 76% put them near the top of our list. Unfortunately, there was a competitor just a block away with a slightly better offering. You can read that review here.

Warning: Hours posted on Google Maps are inaccurate.