Confitería Torres, Santiago

The claim

A confectionery of 1879 that became one of the oldest eating and drinking rooms still working in central Santiago, in the Palacio Íñiguez on the Alameda since 1904. Presidents, writers and newspapermen used it; the Barros Luco sandwich was named here for the president who kept ordering it, and the house is one of those credited with inventing the cola de mono.

What the records show

Spanish Wikipedia, citing Memoria Chilena and the house itself, records that a butler named Torres founded the confectionery in 1879 and that it has stood in the Palacio Íñiguez on the Alameda since 1904. A Santiago daily of the period gives the year a second and independent reading. El Cronista of Thursday 26 April 1979, read in the digital archive the Universidad Diego Portales keeps of it, reports the house preparing to mark the centenary of its inauguration that Saturday, with a plan of festivities across the year, a reissue of the confectionery's old eleven o'clock service and a small room set aside for daily tertulias — which puts the opening in the last days of April 1879. The same article disagrees with the encyclopaedia about the founder's name: it calls him Juan Domingo Torres, the mayordomo of a grand house and a virtuoso cook, where Spanish Wikipedia has José Domingo Torres, and nothing traced settles which is right. It also describes the premises as they stood in 1979 — by then only a bar-restaurant, in the paper's words — with the barros luco and the cola de mono both said to have been invented there, the drink poured only in December and mixed by a barman, Germán Erper, with a long cherrywood stick he took home at the end of the month. Bartolomé Alomar had owned it since 1959. In September 1910 the rooms held the vermouth of honour for the diplomats invited to Chile's centenary; presidents and writers used it; the family Soto Misseroni hold it now and have opened two further branches. No deed, licence or directory has been read behind 1879, so the grade is C, and nobody we can read says in words that a visitor is served a drink without a meal, which the page says as well.

What to look for inside

The vermouth of honour for the diplomatic corps at Chile's centenary was held here in September 1910
The Barros Luco sandwich is said to have been invented here for the president who ordered it

Visiting

Confitería Torres is in Santiago, Chile, at Avenida Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins 1570, Santiago. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

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