Restaurante Hocha — Old Taiwan comes to Chile
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Santiago, Chile
Ever since my arrival in Santiago Chile more than three years ago, I have been searching for Asian cuisine offering authentic flavors…with limited success. So when I heard about Restaurante Hocha in the city’s old downtown my expectation of “Taiwanese authenticity” was low. Still, such assertions must be tested, and as one who would happily eat three squares of Asian cuisine a day forever, I was just the Foodwalker to do so.
The easiest way to get to Hocha is by Santiago’s excellent metro rather than fighting the chaotic surface traffic. Once on street level I tried to spot the restaurant’s green map of Taiwan above its narrow storefront inconspicuously wedged between other storefronts. Inside, the restaurant opened up into a surprisingly large brick-exposed, industrial space where a wall mural depicting the island of Taiwan and some of its most iconic street foods greeted my eyes. That’s right, street foods. The classic dishes are painted beside the general location where each originated. Across the back walls and past the open bar leading to the kitchen are sepia representations of old Taipei from decades ago, when street food fed most of its inhabitants. This apparent appreciation of street food — one of those things which holds my life together — was encouraging. So far, so good, I murmured aloud.
Upon meeting Claire Wang I was instantly relieved with her perfect English, in addition to Spanish and any number of other languages. Before opening Hocha she was, after all, a linguistic translator in both Asia and Chile. When she and husband/business partner Miguel Pu decided to leave Taiwan for his childhood home of Ecuador they stopped in Chile and have never left. But as much as they love this country and its people so far away from home, they found the culinary transition difficult. “When we first got here we were starving, walking down the streets looking or good things to eat,” explained the trim 5’2” chef dressed in a black cook’s coat. “We were disappointed with the local cuisine here and tried so many Chinese restaurants to satisfy our cravings, but were always let down with each bite.” Behind her, the servers tending tables were sharply dressed in matching black with red suspenders. A sense of order and uniformity struck me as I watched the front of the house operate and, listening to Claire explain the Hocha story, I immediately understood why: all the details have been thought out here.
“We basically started this restaurant out of necessity because we realized that if we wanted authentic Asian food would have to make it ourselves,” Claire explained. That’s when they decided in 2014 to open Hocha while at the same time balancing unrelated careers. “We wanted to show people in Chile what Taiwanese food was, even though we had no money and knew nothing about opening a restaurant.” Claire shook her head, like so many other enterprising millennials with a noble idea and no one to tell them it’s impossible. “We poured our hearts and souls into building that tiny place. We did everything ourselves; were there all the time and had no time to sleep or even focus on my real job. It was crazy.”
It took a while for local diners to find Hocha when they first opened in Santiago’s Korean enclave of Patronato. “The biggest challenge was making people understand that ‘Thai’ food was not short for ‘Taiwanese’ food,” Claire laughed, “and that, no, we didn’t have Pad Thai.” Eventually the place caught on, with locals enjoying the completely-different flavors. Chilean palates were gradually opening at that time; a phenomenon that has, thankfully, been continuing throughout Santiago. “Before we knew it there were lines outside of the restaurant on weekends. We couldn’t believe it.”
After a couple of years, Miguel persuaded her to give up her career as a corporate translator with Google and go “all in.” They moved to their current, larger space downtown, and it was here that Hocha was reborn. “We wanted to capture the essence of street food from 1950’s Taipei and deliver it to Chileans on a larger scale,” Claire said. So they revamped their management, trained the staff to provide good customer service — something Chile is notoriously poor about — and made the operation more professional. Their family approved of their mission and helped them expand the menu with even more classic foods of Taiwan, taught by Claire’s mother and grandmother. And those murals of maps and images of old Taiwan on the walls? “My sister came and painted them herself,” Claire pointed proudly.
Today, nearly everything at Hocha whispers of Claire’s childhood back home. That’s no accident; her whole purpose of opening Hocha was to bring that old home to her new home. But it wasn’t something that Claire had previously dreamed of doing. She wasn’t one of those kids who always wanted to run a kitchen or go to culinary school. Instead, she learned through real life by helping out at family restaurants and slinking around Taiwan’s legendary night markets, always searching for something delicious. “Food, with all its diversity, is the passion of Taiwan and everyone there knows how to cook something that’s different from what others are cooking. We needed to bring that to Chile.”
In many ethnic eateries in foreign places, there is the menu, and then there is a ‘hidden menu.’ Those in the know will ask for that unspoken lineup of offerings, often not printed or maybe scrawled on plain paper. It’s never offered in the front of the house and will only be acknowledged to even exist when requested with authority. But at Hocha there is no hidden menu. “Why hide it?” Claire asked rhetorically. That’s because the main driver of the couple’s bold decision to open this place was to recreate Taiwan’s tastes for Chileans to discover; to present the street-food of the island’s everyperson rather than the fancier cuisine of pricier establishments. What mattered was that the recipes had to be authentic with those elusive flavors they each longed for. “But we did have to tame the hot spices in some dishes for the (tragically) bland Chilean palate,” the chef shrugged. “Although those fiery spices are still available on the side,” she quickly added.
Hocha’s menu is almost entirely Taiwanese, recipes passed down through the generations by word of mouth and perfected by Claire through trial and error. It is, of course, in Spanish, which always seems to this gringo Foodwalker curious to reconcile — translating into English descriptions in Spanish about food from Taiwan. Corn dogs, for example, described simply as hot dogs coated in cornmeal and deep fried, sounded uninspiring until the chef explained that, as non-Asian as this appears, it is one of the most popular street snack obsessions in Taiwan. And upon first bite one happily encounters a flavor of both sausage and coating that is unique to the island nation. No, this is not your typical tubesteak-on-a-stick from a suburban carnival.
Other items on the menu presented more exciting promises of delivering Taiwan’s trademark salty/sweet taste sensations. Like the Gua Bao, pork belly, slow-braised in a rich elixir of rice wine, soy sauce, and Chinese five-spice and slipped into a pillowy, steamed mantou bun with pickled greens, cilantro, and powdered peanuts. It may be the most famous hand-held food of Taipei’s narrow streets, and is certainly — for good reason — a favorite at Hocha.
Add to that a bowl of Nio Rou Mien to bring you home, with its delicate noodles slithering amidst chunks of beef shank, tendon and pickled mustard greens, and cooked for days in a beef-bone broth of star anise, cloves, Chinese cinnamon, Sichuan pepper, and fennel seeds. It’s then hopped-up with a fistful of basil, garlic and scallion. You want to taste Taiwan? This is it.
Similarly, the Fried Tofu stood out as something not to shy away from. While admittedly not the Stinky Tofu version that is as much a cult in Taiwan as durian is in Singapore, the chef captures its essence with a milder, toothsome version. Crisp and golden cubes of firm tofu blanketed with pickled carrots and greens and a light garlic/soy drizzle. “I can’t ignore my customers,” explained Chef Claire. “If I served stinky tofu I’d lose a lot of patrons just from the smell.”
But for me, the highlight of my tasty travel back to old Taiwan was the Orejitas; slivers of fresh julienned pigs ears, slow cooked over low heat for days and energized with a hint of garlic, sesame, onion and ginger. The mouth feel was triumphantly silky smooth and lightly chewy, unexpectedly transportive to satisfying childhood sensations of gnawing on a strip of jerky, chewing on a binky, or biting into the yellow surface of a #2 pencil in elementary school.
Orejitas (Slivered Pigs Ears)
If reaching back to the real food of street level Taiwan is Restaurante Hocha’s purpose for being in Santiago, injecting the passion, excitement and nostalgia behind those flavors is the élan vital which propels it into the future. To miss those dishes from your meal is to, well, sort of miss the whole point of this place. And now, just as Claire and Miguel have hit their stride with full tables and happy eaters, they are not letting up in their feat of serving Taiwan to Chile. Later this year they’ll be opening a new, even more street-food-oriented joint, selling only that wondrous Gua Bao in several iconic varieties. The idea of even more excellent Taiwanese street food coming to Santiago is exciting and perhaps indicative of the expanding nature of foreign food in Chile overall. Let’s hope others from far away follow in their footsteps.
Avenida Nueva Providencia 1346, Santiago Chile
