When the original Luco's on Orrego Luco opened, it was basically flawless: a perfect copy of Uncle Fletch (the high-water mark for gourmet burgers in Chile), but with better, less 'local-flavored' service.
This location on Providencia has been open for some time, and I had not bothered to try it until today because I had not been out for a burger in Chile in a little over a year.
Apparently what happened here is that the owner sold off the rights to the name and it was taken over by people used to churning out the same sad crap that makes local cuisine tragic. Gone is the creative menu, the high-quality meat has been replaced by vulgar gargantuan portions of sub-standard beef served at that boiled-tasting soggy medium-well brown point that is so popular in Chilean food.
The menu is filled with talentless and poorly copied rehashes. The bun is huge under-baked crumbly crap (tastes like powdered milk - not at all what's visible in Evelyn K's great review), and the service is most definitely Chilean in the worst sense of the word: one single table seated, five staff hanging around chatting with each other, yet it took several minutes to get anyone's attention to get the bill, and two of them doing that very, very slimy thing that's half-way between busking and just hitting on women that walk by.
The place is dead and buried. read more