Café Wonderland sits on a courtyard in the Lastarria neighbourhood — one of those Santiago addresses that requires a degree of local knowledge to locate and rewards it when you do. The courtyard opens behind a street-level entrance onto a space organised around a central garden: tables under awnings, potted plants, and the kind of unhurried atmosphere that develops when a café establishes itself slowly in a neighbourhood rather than opening to capture it. The building dates from the early twentieth century; the café operates in keeping with its architecture. The menu is simple and takes the coffee seriously. The neighbourhood immediately around it contains the Museo de Arte Visual, the Biblioteca de Santiago, and several blocks of early-twentieth-century residential architecture that repays slow walking.
Lastarria, Santiago, Chile