We all have our favorite watering hole – that place close to home where you can have a bite to eat, sip on your preferred drink, have a chat with neighbors, friends, strangers. A place where you feel welcome and frequent often. La Santita, a tiny Latin American restaurant located on the tree-lined Boulevard Eugène Pierre, embodies this description. A sister restaurant to the popular El Santo Cachón, La Santita opened just a little over a year ago, and has rapidly become a neighborhood favorite.
Here, owners and Marseille transplants, Chilean-born Cristobal Urizar and his French wife, Mathilde Gineste, serve up traditional Latin American favorites with French verve. After meeting in Honduras while on holiday, the pair moved to Marseille and have called it home for 15 years. Mathilde was persuasive in making the move to Marseille. Originally from Brittany, she was attracted to Marseille because it is a city unlike the rest of France. It didn’t take much to convince Cristobal. “I knew of the football team [l’Olympique de Marseille] and of course, it’s sunny here,” he says. “It looks a little bit like Latin America, so I don’t feel out of place. It’s similar because it’s a little bit messy. There’s a mix of people. There’s a rich culture here.”
Cristobal was inspired to learn the restaurant business because his family was always in the kitchen. His brother, Rodrigo, studied cooking, and as young men they tested different recipes and cooked together for their family. Upon arriving in Marseille, he and Mathilde worked in a restaurant and learned the ropes. After a few years, they decided they would open their own place.
Their initial endeavor, El Santo Cachón, opened in 2012 and is named after the song popularized by the Colombian duo Los Embajadores Vallenatos. “We often danced to this song in the evenings, and without thinking too much about it, we decided on this name for the restaurant,” Cristobal reminisces about his beginnings in Marseille. El Santo Cachón highlights the rich and varied gastronomic heritage of Chile with dishes that are seasoned with merkén (a seasoning of ground-up chile originated by the Mapuche people in the Araucanía region of southern Chile).
With the success of that venture, the couple decided to open La Santita when they heard about an available small space with an outdoor sidewalk-patio. Cristobal’s brother Rodrigo relocated to Marseille with his family to be closer to Cristobal and to help get the restaurant started. They all loved the idea because it reminded them of a Latin American fuente de soda, a popular counter-style diner.
Cristobal elaborates on this concept: “Fuentes de soda are popular restaurants for all social classes. You can go there every day. It’s a bit like a neighborhood brasserie in France. In Chile, it’s counter service, with people eating at the bar and the cooks in front of us. Here at La Santita, the kitchen is open to create this approach. Customers don’t eat at the counter, but the tables are close together, so we recreate that atmosphere.”
After a year, the family wanted to expand the menu at La Santita. They searched for a chef that would understand the flavors and the heart of Latin American cuisine. Cuban-born chef Ronald Estrada Alvarez answered that call, and anyone lucky enough to dine at the pocket-size spot are witness to the fruits of this successful partnership.
The lunch menu includes empanadas stuffed with chorizo and cheese, chicken, beef or vegetables. Empanadas are popular to eat at home during Chile’s national festival, and Cristobal says his mother made the best, a specialty he’s now sharing with Marseille. Sandwiches are available as well, with options like Viennese or vegetarian sausage on homemade brioche bread (hotdog-style) with tomato, avocado, and salsa verde or a sandwich of shredded beef on a bun with chimichurri and merkén mayo. For dessert, there are soda-fountain classics such as chocolate, strawberry and dulce de leche sundaes or an assortment of ice creams and sorbets served on sugar cones.
“In Chile, fuentes de soda is known for serving great sandwiches, and people go there not only for that, but also for everyday dishes that you can eat at home and that remind us of our childhood,” Cristobal says of the menu. “Being in another country and another culture, we decided to broaden our menu and offer something very cheerful, colorful and full of flavors, a cuisine that represents us. Above all, we want people to have an excellent time meeting other people, chatting, exchanging and sharing. We are the counter of Latin America.”
One of the menu darlings is the fresh-from-the-sea ceviche, marinated in leche de tigre (citrus-based marinade), coconut milk, avocado, pomegranate and ginger and made fresh daily. Cristobal touts the ceviche as his favorite. “It’s a dish that really represents me.”
The dinner menu highlights Chef Ronald’s skills, featuring a rotating menu that he creates from what inspires him at the market. To get a taste of what he’s up to, we recently gathered at La Santita with friends to sample his fall plates. To start off, we choose an appetizer of fish croquettes with anchovy mayonnaise, accompanied by homemade margaritas and pisco sours. For our main course, we share a duck breast served with milles-feuilles of sweet potato, and pineapple chutney; shrimp tarts with tobiko roe, aji aéarillo and passion fruit sabayon, and grilled octopus with mashed fingerling potatoes, purée of red pepper, rosemary, and chorizo oil. After a lot of oohs and aahs, every plate is cleaned.
Tables quickly fill to capacity and during the course of the evening, Chef Ronald mingles with customers on the patio. Born in Antilla, a small town in the Holguín province of Cuba, Ronald tells us that as a young boy, he would help his grandmother in the kitchen. He describes her as an artist who could make something delicious from almost nothing. He developed a passion and says cooking became “an addiction; it was a drug for me.” He moved to Playa Larga in the Matanzas province and dedicated his time to working in the kitchen. Eventually he made his way to Paris in 2018, where he learned French culinary technique.
Recruited by Cristobal to work at La Santita, Ronald has only been in Marseille for five months. “I’m influenced by Latin American flavors, but I use French technique for prepping and cooking,” he says. Ronald likes exploring the markets and creates dishes using different local ingredients and products. “It is a very important part of Latin American culture to share the kitchen, to share the cooking, to share the meal.”
Cristobal and Mathilde want La Santita to represent Latin America in Marseille and so far, their wish has been a grand success. As we mull over which dessert to choose, a crème brûlée made with dulce de leche or a chocolate cremeux with kumquat confit and chocolate-chili tuile, Cristobal shares that when Chef Ronald goes outside to greet people, they stand up and clap. With that, we take both desserts! On this early fall night, there is a full house at the neighborhood watering hole, the fuentes de soda of Marseille.
Published on November 07, 2023
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