King crab or false king crab: telling them apart before you pay
Two different species, two different prices, and a confusion one question resolves.
Seasonal products
What is actually available now, and what is subject to closed seasons, quotas or weather.
Guides and answers
Seafood available by season
What depends on closed seasons, what depends on the sanitation programme, and what depends only on the weather.
Eating morel in Patagonia
A mushroom of weeks, not months. Where it fits in a trip and when it simply does not.
What king crab costs, and why
The five things that set the price, and the only published price we could actually verify.
The collusion case over buying Magallanes king crab
Seven companies, eight executives and conduct charged between 2012 and 2021, before Chile’s Competition Tribunal. No ruling.
Why king crab goes to China, and what that means for the local table
Seven buyers take almost everything and export it. That is where the two things felt in the city come from: that there is barely anywhere to buy it, and that it is expensive.
How to buy legal king crab, and why the informal one is cheaper
What the authority requires, what to ask for, and what you are really buying when the price does not add up.
Rose and calafate: two Patagonian infusions and what is actually known about them
One comes from a shrub that was always here. The other from a rose someone brought, which outlived the person who planted it.
The Magallanes morel that still has no name
In January, the head of INIA in Magallanes said there might be a species unique in the world here. Seven months on it has not been described, and the fungus is still exported nameless.
Products
Magellanic king crab
The crustacean that defines the Magallanes table. Trapped in the cold waters of the strait and the channels.
Scallop
A sweet, firm-fleshed mollusc, served raw, grilled or barely seared.
Sea urchin
A dived, intense, seasonal product. Eaten raw, almost always untouched.
Blue mussel
Southern Chilean mussel, the base of broths, rice dishes and preserves.
Clam
A soft-bottom mollusc with a mineral flavour, present in broths and steamed dishes.
Austral fish (salmon, robalo, southern hake)
A group of cold-water fish on the regional table, of mixed origin: wild-caught and farmed.
Calafate berry
Dark berry of the thorny Patagonian shrub. A regional emblem with a short season.
Rhubarb
An austral garden plant, acidic and cold-hardy. The base of regional desserts and preserves.
Wild apple
Feral fruit from old settler orchards. Small, acidic, autumnal.
Morel
A spring mushroom of the austral forest. Very short window, hand-foraged, low volume.