First thing we need to get out of our chest: most Chileans eat sandwiches with knife and fork. Crazy right? We thought so, but there is a good reason for it – their sandwiches are massive! Don’t worry, when you are more than half way through it you should be able to pick it up.

Sandwiches are the most common “fast food” all over Chile, you find them anywhere. It is also one of the cheapest meals you can have.

When eating sandwiches in Chile, there are (at least) three variables:
1. The bread
2. The meat
3. The toppings

Let’s start with the bread. Completos and As are both with hot dog bread. All other sandwiches are made with Chilean round sandwich bread.

Next comes the meat. Completos have sausage while As and other sandwiches can have barbecue meat (churrasco), lomo (pork), ave (chicken), burger or mechada (pulled meat).

As for the toppings, the most common combination is Italiano, which has avocado, tomato and mayonese – thus the colors of the Italian flag. Anything with avocado in chilean (“palta” as they call it) is a must. We had never tasted such rich avocados. The Chacarero complements will give you tomato, peppers and green sprouts. Luco is the simplest one – just cheese. Completo (yes, completo again) would be the Italiano plus chucrute. Pobre will get you fried egg, fried onions and mayo.

Mixing and matching all of this give you and infinite list of delicious possibilities. To make it all easier, sometimes the categories may vary a bit the ingredients. So good luck!

Besides this infinite mix and match, there are some signature sandwiches that are worth tasting. One of them is called the Barros Luco and you can find it almost anywhere. This one is named after President Rámon Barros Luco that used to order this steak and melted cheese sandwich regularly in Confiteria Torres in Santiago. If you’re not feeling like steak you can go for the Barros Jarpa, a variation with ham and melted cheese that was named after Ernesto Barros Jarpa. Curious fact: Ernesto Barros Jarpa never ordered this sandwich – Club de la Unión decided to use his name just because he was also called Barros.