It was a delightful surprise to us to find out, upon arrival at Hotel Las Torres, that it was an all-inclusive package. Aside from a very few cocktails (and we didn't even check that against a wine list), everything on the menu, including beverages, was part of our accommodations package. And let me tell you, we had some, well, average/mediocre hotel food on our trip (mostly at breakfasts), but this hotel did not let us down at all. Nope!
Before we even got into our rooms and then off on an afternoon excursion, we sat down in the lobby bar area and enjoyed lunch. They called my meal the Patagonian sandwich,
which essentially consisted of lamb (tender, pulled) on a ciabatta with cheese and some sort of a sauce. Conrad and I could have had one between us and still not finished it. The servings were substantial as well as tasty. Also: steak fries, and nicely done ones at that. Meanwhile, as tempting as it was to try an adult beverage, we had some afternoon hiking, so I asked for the mint lemonade that Audrey, who was sitting next to me, was already enjoying. My request was rather literally lost in translation, for what I received was a lemonade but assuredly not green and minty!
Dinner was over in the restaurant, and we had a table for eight of us in the middle of the room. Wine flowed as much as we wanted (but we didn't let it flow too much), and there were three choices for each course. First up for me: salmon tartare.
A fine start. Next up: hake.
A nice white fish, cooked properly. The carrots were from the hotel garden (more on that in a future post). It was served with a potato puree that functioned as a sauce and was perhaps made using a food processor - it had a bit of a gummy texture that can come about from mashing or pureeing potatoes in a device like that. The dessert featured bitter sweet beer jellies with meringue and crumbles.
Swiped together, it was a nice mouthful of contrasting flavours and textures.
After dinner, I decided to have a nightcap cocktail. The bartender makes his own gin, so I indulged in a martini.
It was clean, light, and a good end to the evening.
I didn't photograph the breakfast buffet or omelet station, but we didn't go hungry at breakfast any day there. The second day, we were out on excursion at lunch time, so we had box lunches that included some enormous sandwiches. Smoked salmon for me with arugula from their garden. We made it back to the hotel well in time for dinner, so I cleaned up and raced down to the bar ahead of Conrad. I got to chat with the bartender then about his gin, his beer (more on that in a future post as well), and his infusions. He was drying local berries and making syrups and more. He was using leaves and branches such as the sticky, medicinal-sweet paramela. He let me try the latter in his infused pisco even.
But I settled on a pre-dinner drink that took advantage of the rhubarb that was grown in their garden.
Wow, that punched through. It was a beautiful drink to look at, and it had a suitable sweet-tartness. I enjoyed it a lot.
It was off to dinner after that, and the menu was a little different. You've seen the guanaco carpaccio already, but I share it again.
It's a very mild meat and needed its accompaniments to sharpen it up. It was also cut rather thick. I was happy to try it, but it wasn't something I would seek out again. The fish was hake again.
Served with a carrot puree and baby turnips and an onion marmalade, it was a better dish than the night before. The dessert thrilled me to see on the menu: a crumble featuring gooseberries.
And given that the hotel garden produced rhubarb, I was confident I would see actually gooeseberries, not Cape gooseberries (physalis). Sure enough, I did. And they were a little weird - I could swear that they had been pickled somehow because they had a brininess that I hadn't known in the fruit before. A couple of other people at the table didn't like them (and I should add that the main part of the crumble was a mixture of other berries, including currants), and left them out, but I found that when enjoyed with the other parts of the dessert, it added a savoury edge that I appreciated.
Hotel dining, especially when a captive audience, can be a decidedly mixed bag. Conrad and I had an especially good experience several years back in Tuscany. Happily, we can consider this lovely hotel in southern Chile a success!
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