Bar Nacional is one of the oldest bars of the Santiago Centro — an address that survives without reinventing itself, which in a city of rapid commercial turnover is a form of editorial achievement. The interior is the Spanish immigrant bar of the early twentieth century: tiled walls, a zinc bar, Formica tables, the same clientele at the same hours. The menu is unchanged: empanadas, cazuela, and beer served in the correct glass. The neighbourhood around it is the administrative and commercial heart of the old city, an area that repays slow walking on a weekday afternoon when the offices empty and the streets take on a different quality of light. The bar is the correct place to be before or after that walk.
Centro Histórico, Santiago, Chile