Photo of the Day: Clay Bowls in Pomaire, Chile

Required Eating

Posted by Robyn Lee, April 21, 2008 at 5:30 PM

From April 13 to 19, I traveled around Chile with two other American food journalists on a culinary media trip. Here's another snapshot from that week. —Robyn Lee

On our drive from Santiago to the winery-laden Cachapoal Valley, we stopped in Pomaire, a small village famous for its clay pottery, including bowls, baking ware, and vases in all different sizes, along with cute piggy banks. If you eat at any restaurant serving traditional food in Chile, you'll probably find that they use pottery from Pomaire. Although the village's dusty streets were mostly semi-deserted on a Tuesday morning, we were able to browse a few shops selling their super-low priced wares.

I bought four medium-sized bowls pictured above from a shop run by an old grandmotherly-type woman, each bowl costing a grand 300 Chilean pesos, or about $0.66—this is a dangerous place to be if you like stocking up on beautiful tableware without doing harm to your bank account. Unfortunately, three of the four bowls broke in my luggage when I got home (note to self: bring packing peanuts on my next trip to Pomaire), but at least the monetary loss was low.

6 Comments | Tags: Chile, Photo of the Day, Snapshots From Chile

6 Comments:

Oh, those are gorgeous. I mean, I get cheap plates from Ikea for not much more than 66 cents--but they're definitely not as nice. :)

P.S. I am such a fan of your blog, Robyn! You are absolutely hilarious and your pictures are awesome.

cochon at 5:33PM on 04/21/08

Thanks, cochon! Couldn't say anything very funny about pottery, but...maybe my next entry? :)

All the pottery was SO PRETTY. (Here's a photo from another pottery store.) And ridiculously cheap. I can't imagine how much more expensive this stuff would be here. Then again, flying to Chile ain't so cheap...

roboppy at 6:29PM on 04/21/08

Maybe you should claim them to the airline as "hand-crafted", "artisan" pottery. :D

Carosone at 9:22PM on 04/21/08

Robyn---
What is your blog address?

Erinay77 at 10:52PM on 04/21/08

Ooww, I know these! My mom-in-law makes pastel de choclo in them. I'm looking forward to your next Chile-post!

jenneke at 2:22AM on 04/22/08

@Carosone: Hand crafted, artisan pottery that magically turns into shards of baked clay!!!

@Erinay77: roboppy.net/food! Not much going on there now though...since I've been out for a week. ;_;

@jenneke: Ooh, I would like to meet your mom-in-law. ;) That's mostly how I saw it used too...or as soup bowls. Today I'm planning to use pastel de choclo as my POTD! :)

roboppy at 10:13AM on 04/22/08

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