5 Best Restaurants in Viña del Mar, The Central Coast

If your travels don't include the Mapuche heartland of La Araucanía, head to this artfully designed restaurant in Viña for a vital introduction to the little-appreciated cuisine of Chile's largest indigenous group. Start with one of the myriad tasting boards before seguing into the mains, which feature everything from wild boar to antioxidant-rich maqui berries and piñón seeds from ancient araucaria trees.

Whether you like your coffee prepared in a Chemex or espresso machine, brewed hot or cold, you can find it at this friendly café, which also serves up incredibly cheap panini sandwiches, salads, and traditional Chilean cakes.

Facing the casino, this elegant seafood restaurant specializes in made-from-scratch pasta, crab casseroles, tuna tartare, and fresh-caught fish draped in creative sauces. There's a rare-in-Chile English-language menu, and you can expect impeccable service from the career waiters.

More than six decades after Edoardo Melotti emigrated here from northern Italy, his restaurant maintains a reputation for first-class food and service. The menu includes traditional gnocchi, as well as pasta stuffed with shrimp, carne mechada (shredded beef), or pear, walnut, and ricotta. Complement your meal with a bottle from the extensive wine list. The modern dining room with abundant foliage and large windows overlooks busy Avenida San Martín. Farther inside, the two dining rooms in the house that the restaurant originally occupied are elegant and more refined.

With so much fresh fish available, it's no wonder that sushi and sashimi have caught on with locals. In fact, it's hard to find a block downtown that lacks a Japanese restaurant, but a favorite is Shitake, which occupies a few gold and beige rooms on Avenida San Martín. The tempura is flavorful, especially when it incorporates juicy Ecuadorean shrimp. Sushi here is a group activity—you can order platters of anywhere from 18 to 103 pieces.