For Chile's most elemental cuisine, visit this island of female chefs

At the southern edge of South America, Mother Nature plays with the full spectrum of her powers. One moment, the horizon over the Pacific glows opalescent; the next, it folds into steel. Cast adrift from Chile’s Lake District, the emerald island of Chiloé sits amid the whims of sea and sky, its hardy denizens — many smallholders, fishermen and shellfish divers — thriving alongside the elements in one of the most remote quadrants of the map.

“It’s impossible to separate our existence from the ocean,” says silver-haired chef and sheep farmer Andrea Saldivia González, foraging luche seaweed from a rockpool as waves burst around her boots. “In Chiloé, life is tied to the water.” We’re combing a pebbly cove near her restaurant in the northwest, gathering kelp for food and fertiliser. The beach is deserted — we pause to marvel at a washed-up whale vertebra, a reminder of the leviathans riding the Humboldt Current.

Later, back at Andrea’s smallholding Al Norte del Sur, the air’s alive with bleating lambs and the scent of wood smoke. “Slow food is a kind of religion for me. It’s about quality; I’m not interested in scaling for profit,” she says, leading me through an unruly vegetable patch to an inviting dining room. “This is an extension of our family kitchen,” Andrea adds, pouring out apple cider brewed by her sister. Her family has lived on this land for a century; it was her mother, Iris, who turned the farm into a restaurant two decades ago.

Lunch arrives in generous succession: razor clams and sea snails dressed with lemon; followed by cazuela de cordero — lamb smoked over applewood then slow-cooked, presented in a broth of potatoes and cochayuyo seaweed.

It tastes of the island: earth and ocean.

I’m touring Chiloé with bearded guide Dan Ettinger, the hours spent driving uneven roads between forests and fjords in his SUV filled with storytelling. Born in Connecticut but long settled here with his Chilote wife, he’s equal parts historian and naturalist. “Chiloé’s always been, by necessity, self-sufficient,” he tells me as we leave Andrea’s. He chronicles the islanders’ spirit throughout history, from the early Indigenous Chono people, with their female free-divers, to their fierce, monarchist stance during the Chilean War of Independence in the early 19th century. “Even now, people refer to the mainland as el conti — the continent — like it’s another world.”

That isolation is soon to diminish. Despite a ferry service and airport, a suspension bridge to the mainland is under construction, slated for completion in 2028. It’s seen by some as an attempt by the government to fold the island into the national coffers, boosting the export capacity of local salmon fisheries. “Local people could stand to lose their identity,” Dan says.

We head west to the bay of Punihuil, where a waiting rigid inflatable boat skims towards three rocky outcrops, a pod of small Chilean dolphins in pursuit. “This is the only place where Humboldt and Magellanic penguins nest together — thousands of them, some even interbreeding,” Dan shouts over the engine. It’s early in the season but we’re lucky: we spy little birds waddling across the rocks. “Sail out here long enough and the line between myth and reality blurs,” Dan says. “Many fishermen swear they’ve seen the Caleuche, a ghost ship. Or at least something they can’t explain.”

Even the capital, Castro, is in dialogue with the sea and its spirits. The next day, I pass the wooden carvings of trolls and sirens that line the steep shopping thoroughfare of Blanco Encalada; the figures are sold as trinkets, too, in the municipal market, between jars of licor de oro moonshine. Over in the waterfront Gamboa neighbourhood, rows of palafitos — stilted homes from the mid-19th century, now mostly boutique hotels — teeter over the tide. “The design speaks to Chiloé’s amphibious nature,” Dan says. “Back in the day, you could step from your home straight into your boat.”

I’m in town to be cooked for by acclaimed chef Lorna Muñoz, an ethnographer of Chilote cuisine, in her restaurant, Travesía. In 2008, after years spent collecting ancestral techniques from elderly islanders, she co-authored the cookbook Chiloé Contado desde la Cocina (Chiloé recounted from the kitchen) — a landmark work that helped preserve a culinary heritage. Opening a restaurant in her family’s pretty, canary-yellow house followed naturally. “I see this project as a necessity,” she says, “to honour the under-appreciated work of generations of women.”

With a red-lipped smile and swish of jet-black hair, she disappears into her kitchen, staffed only by women. The menu changes with the seasons: today, chanchito — roasted pork glazed with local murta berry jam — and a dish of baked hake draped with foamy sea urchin, sat atop a vegetable charquicán (stew). Antiques and trinkets decorate the parlour.

The next afternoon, I follow a dirt track to Agroturismo Hardy y María Luisa, where an earthen mound is sending up tendrils of steam. “Just in time,” calls Carol Dimiter Maldonado, the diminutive de-facto manager of the family farm, wiping her hands on her apron. With practised movements, she lifts away turf and nalca rhubarb leaves to reveal a crater of shellfish and meats sizzling on hot volcanic stones: a curanto, Chiloé’s ancient communal feast. “We’re continuing a 6,000-year tradition,” Dan murmurs.

In the warm kitchen, Carol heaps plates with clams, mussels, chorizo, lamb and chapalele (potato dumplings), made with just some of the islands’ numerous native spud species. It’s a delicious feast, each ingredient subtly infusing the others — designed to be eaten elbow-to-elbow with neighbours after a minga, a communal Chilote task, like harvesting a field. “Every curanto is different,” Carol explains. “It’s very hands-on, so the people you cook with change the dynamic. Making it keeps the tradition alive.”

That night, in a coastal cottage on the 20-acre private Chil-hué estate, I watch the bay glimmer with the lights of fishing boats. Rain thunders against the roof and I wonder if the phantom Caleuche is sailing through the storm. Visiting Chiloé aboard the Beagle in 1835, Charles Darwin described it as ‘the border of Christianity’, a nod to the island’s folk mysticism. For the naturalist, the weather was ‘detestable’ — but there’s a certain magic in its changeability. The way squalls and sunshine trade shifts, how the light feels freshly wrung from the clouds. It’s shaped the indomitable spirit of the local women, after all — the torch bearers I’ve met, saving what they can from the tides of change.