Mestizo

When I first visited Santiago more than a decade ago there were only two restaurants that could claim they offered gourmet cuisine, Osadía in Vitacura, and the notorious Astrid y Gastón in Providencia. Times change and so do cultures. Both those restaurants struggled to adapt to the changing culinary landscape in Latin America. Both are now closed.

Gourmet dining was demanding a more casual, yet in some ways more sophisticated format.
It is against this changing landscape, that Mestizo opened its doors, showing residents of Santiago what the future of upscale dining would look like.

Mestizo meticulously orchestrated this change of direction. It chose a fundamentally perfect location, overlooking the massive contemporary park in Vitacura, Parque Bicentenario. The restaurant took a “no-holds-barred” approach in the creation of the ambience and menu. It would spare no expense in designing, constructing and furnishing what is arguably, a decade after it opened, still the most impressive ambience in Santiago’s restaurant scene.

The food is equally impressive, yet this is one of the least creative menus we’ve seen in the upscale category. It’s filled with dishes that rely on quality ingredients that although aptly executed, aren’t all the memorable.

The service is sketchy. We’ve had varying luck on different occasions. And we note that almost all the negative reviews of Mestizo that we’ve seen on the consumer review sites relate to substandard service.

To minimize the impact of the inconsistent service, we advise avoiding Mestizo at peak dinner hours. There is no menu posted online. In fact, the restaurant’s website, if you could call it that, is a single page with a phone number, the address, an email address and a system for making reservations. Unfortunately, there’s no ability to make a reservation using any of the popular third-party reservation sites.

Notwithstanding the occasional lack of attention at the table by the waiters, a menu with this caliber of ingredients that’s aptly executed in such a memorable ambience makes Mestizo one of the top upscale dining choices in the city.