Before traveling to Chile, I never realized that Americans are very focused on breakfast (it is a common joke here that Americans love huge breakfasts) and dinner. For lunch I would normally just bring a sandwich to work or a couple of snacks to get me through the day. Upon arriving in Chile, I was immediately told that this is not the tradition here! In Chile, Lunch is the most important meal of the day. The whole world stops around 1 -2 p.m. as everyone returns home or goes to a restaurant to have a huge lunch. Lunch is big because many Chileans don't actually have dinner. Traditionally, dinner here is called "once", which is a meal at around 9 or 10 o'clock at night consisting of tea and bread with jam or avocado. So lunch is very important!
The food that I want to talk about in this post is the traditional Chilean lunch, which is called "menu." This consists of a beverage (generally a soda or some juice), a piece of bread, a cup of soup, a salad, some salsa (called "pebre") and a main plate. This main plate varies somewhat but is most commonly some sort of meat and rice or potatoes, or some beans in a soup-type concoction. As a whole, this results in a fairly large meal for lunch.
