An ode to the sea.

• Author: Caruso, Iyna Bort
• Position: Ojo!

THERE'S A SAYING among Chileans. God created their country last and built it out of the world's leftovers. The linguini-strip of a nation has mountains, deserts, rivers, fjords, glaciers--the works. Spend some time pondering menus of baby conger eels, sea urchins, and a shellfish called pivre that looks like the inside of diseased brain and you'll start to think the native cuisine was created from the ocean's leftovers.

Credit the Humboldt Current, the cold deep-sea stream that sweeps north from Antarctica for yielding a fishmonger's dream. Much of the ocean life that feeds off these plankton-rich waters is found nowhere else on earth. Landlubbers can discover them all at the Mercado Central, the glorious 130-year-old seafood market in Santiago, where riches are counted in shells, fins, and scales.

The Mercado Central is an ode to the country's three-thousand-mile Pacific coastline, with all the architectural awe to go along with it. A wrought-iron canopied beauty, the market was built in Britain between 1868 and 1872 and then sent piecemeal to Chile for assembly.

It sits in the historic heart of the city on the banks of the Mapocho River. In its original vision, the space was grandly conceived for expositions and exhibitions of native artists. It opened instead as a wholesale food market.

Today, the Mercado Central is a labyrinth of exotic seafood, fish, and produce stalls open to the public. "It has a constant flow of action and is one of the most interesting places to people-watch in Santiago," says Liz Caskey, an American-born chef who owns and operates a Santiago-based catering firm called Tercer Chakra. "Here you can find all walks of life whose paths cross simultaneously: tourists, businessmen, little kids in strollers. Even the street, dogs have personalities."

The atmosphere is a frenetic one, a sensory blast that starts with the brawny pungency of walk through the doors. Then there are the sights: a textural mix of oily, slippery, and...