A Culinary Visit to Chile on Solano Avenue

If you don’t know exactly where Valparaiso is, you may quickly guess that it’s on the coast as soon as you step inside Restaurant Valparaiso on Solano Avenue in Albany.

Fish nets, model ships and sea scenes immediately set the theme, accented also by life-preservers (the round, donut-shaped ones). The counter in the main dining area looks like the front half of a boat.

When Patch dropped in, the friendly proprietors, Pablo and Myrian Valenzuela, happily answered questions about the spacious restaurant they opened in July and volunteered some local color about the Chilean seaport they grew up in.

The restaurant itself is not new. The couple, who have lived in Albany for 15 years, formerly housed the business, known also as Cafe Valparaiso, at the La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley for a dozen years where it occupied a space about half the size of its approximately 3,250-square-foot Albany location.

The menu focuses on Chilean and other Latin cuisine, and specializes in “homemade recipes that our grandmas and mothers used to prepare,” explained Myrian. “The food is really simple and healthy.”

The focus is on organic, and the Angus beef in grass-fed, they said.

The most popular dish?

It’s a kind of Chilean casserole called Pastel De Choclo ($15) with Angus premium beef, olives, raisins, sliced hard-boiled eggs and chicken topped with creamy corn, served with a tomato salad.

Another featured item is the $7 organic rotisserie chicken lunch special, a quarter chicken offered to-go with rice and salad.

Among the difficulties is finding the right ingredients.

“For myself, it was really a challenge to get the right corn,” Myrian said. “If people eat here – it’s really made the same as in Chile.”

The menu also boasts a variety of Chilean wines, and Pablo says the homemade sangria has a special distinction.

“We have a great sangria,” he said. “We’re the only place that has sangria on tap.”

Another distinction is that the restaurant is the home on Wednesday nights once a month for the free, informal “East Bay Science Cafe” involving scientists addressing various topics scientific and answering questions from whoever shows up. The gatherings sometimes draw 40-60 people, Myrian and Pablo said. The next meeting, at 7 p.m. on Dec. 4, will feature Michael Nachman, director of the UC Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, talking about how DNA and genetics shape evolution in ways that Darwin never imagined.

Valparaiso, like San Francisco, is a city of hills, though perhaps more colorfully named. Pablo volunteered that Myrian grew up on a hill whose name means “Virgin,” while he’s from one called “Pleasure.”

Pablo came to California in 1990, and Myrian in 1998, following a long history of Chilean immigration to California, Pablo said. A very large percentage of Gold Rush San Franciso came from Chile, and Mariposa County got its name from Chileans in 1849, he said.

Now they say they are firmly and gladly rooted in Albany. Pablo also volunteers as a soccer coach, and Myrian volunteers for local school projects. They are planning a fundraiser for the upcoming Ocean View Elementary School trip to Point Bonita.

“I believe honestly people need to be involved,” Myrian said.