Fiestas Patrias in the USA: how to throw a real Chilean Dieciocho

This is our guide to answering that question from a kitchen in Florida, Texas, New Jersey or anywhere else in the United States. Fiestas Patrias is the busiest week of the year in our Davie warehouse, and after shipping Chilean food across all fifty states we have watched a lot of Dieciochos come together, some of them three weeks in the planning and some of them assembled in a panic on the seventeenth. Both can be excellent. Here is how to do it either way.

What the Dieciocho actually celebrates

September 18 marks the First Government Junta of 1810, the meeting that began Chile's independence process. September 19 is the Day of the Glories of the Army, with its military parade, so the celebration is really a two day national holiday that spills generously in both directions. Chileans just call the whole thing el Dieciocho.

In 2026 the eighteenth falls on a Friday and the nineteenth on a Saturday, which for anyone celebrating in the United States is the friendliest possible calendar: a full three day weekend with no time off required. Plan the big table for Friday evening or Saturday afternoon and you are working with the same rhythm as everyone back home.

The music is cueca, declared Chile's national dance by decree in 1979, danced with a handkerchief in the air and a lot of stomping. You do not need to know the steps. You need it playing.

The menu: what actually has to be on the table

A Chilean Dieciocho menu is not infinitely negotiable. There is a short list of things whose absence gets commented on, and a longer list of things nobody will miss. Cook the short list well.

Empanadas de pino, the non-negotiable

Baked, never fried, and filled with pino: seasoned ground or hand cut beef and a great deal of onion, cooked down, then folded around a slice of hard boiled egg, a black olive and sometimes a raisin. The olive matters more than people expect, and it should be a proper Chilean one; we ship Azapa black olives from the northern valley that grows them. For the pino itself, the seasoning is where homesick cooks usually go wrong with American supermarket spices: Aliño Completo is the all purpose Chilean blend that tastes like your mother's kitchen, and a spoon of ground merkén adds the smoke.

Count three per adult and then make more. Empanadas freeze raw, beautifully, which is the single most useful fact in this entire guide: assemble them a week ahead, freeze them flat on a tray, and bake them straight from frozen on the day.

Anticuchos and the asado

The grill does the heavy lifting. Anticuchos are skewers of beef, chicken or pork with onion and pepper between the pieces, seasoned simply and grilled hard. Choripán needs nothing but good sausage, bread and pebre. If you are hosting Americans, this is the part of the menu that needs no translation, and a plate of Chile flag skewers through the anticuchos does more for the photos than any decoration you can hang.

Completos, because someone will want one

Chile's loaded hot dog earns its place at any gathering with children. Vienesas, a soft roll, chopped tomato, mashed palta and mayonnaise in quantities that look wrong and taste right. If you want it to look like Santiago rather than a backyard, the porta completo holder is the small detail that makes Chilean guests laugh out loud. Our pre-baked marraqueta finishes in a home oven if you want the bread right too.

Sopaipillas and pebre

Fried pumpkin bread, eaten savory with pebre and ají or sweet, simmered in chancaca syrup and called sopaipillas pasadas. They are the easiest crowd pleaser on this list and the one guests remember. We carry a Chilean sopaipillas mix that skips the pumpkin prep, and chancaca for the sweet version. Pebre you make fresh: tomato, onion, cilantro, ají, a splash of vinegar. Our full pebre recipe lives in the pan amasado and pebre post.

The sides that make it Chilean

Ensalada chilena is two ingredients and no excuses: thin sliced tomato and onion, the onion soaked in cold water first, with oil, salt and cilantro. Pastel de choclo or humitas bring the corn, and a jar of pastelera de choclo gets you there without hunting for the right corn in an American supermarket. Porotos granados is the other September classic worth making if the crowd skews Chilean. Round it out with a bowl of ají and pebre on the table, always.

What to drink

The terremoto is the drink of the fondas: pipeño wine, a scoop of pineapple ice cream and a drizzle of grenadine. Its name means earthquake and the second glass is called a réplica, an aftershock, which tells you everything about how it is dosed. Chicha, the fermented apple or grape drink, is the other September staple, and chupilca, red wine stirred with toasted flour, is the old southern countryside version still drunk during fiestas patrias; our harina tostada is the same toasted flour. Wine and pipeño you will need to source locally, since we cannot ship alcohol nationwide.

For everyone not drinking, and for the children, the answer is mote con huesillo: sun dried peaches in cinnamon syrup over husked wheat, spooned as much as sipped. We wrote a full mote con huesillo recipe for exactly this occasion. Our pisco sour mix handles the cocktail side of the table for guests bringing their own bottle.

Setting the table like a fonda

Decoration is where a Dieciocho stops being a dinner party and starts being a fonda. The full kit is simple and cheap: the Chilean flag, paper garlands strung across the room or the yard, and enough red, white and blue that nobody mistakes the occasion for the Fourth of July. Our Chilean party supplies carry the garlands, banderines and table pieces, and Chile flags and banners covers everything from a proper full size flag to the mini window flag people put on the car for the week.

If children are involved, dressing them as huaso and huasa is the tradition that produces the photos parents keep for twenty years; the huasa dress and the rest of the Chilean clothing and gear are stocked for September for a reason. One honest warning, straight from our own order history: flag and decoration orders peak in the first two weeks of September and then fall off a cliff. By the week of the eighteenth, shipping can no longer save you. Ordering the decorations in late August is the single easiest way to avoid a bare table, and we have watched that pattern repeat every September since 2020.

The games nobody expects and everybody plays

Chile's traditional games are recognized as national heritage, and they are all outdoor, cheap and mildly competitive: volantines flown in the September wind, the spinning trompo, the emboque, and rayuela. Even a small backyard supports an emboque and a trompo, and the sack races and egg and spoon relays of a yincana dieciochera are usually what the kids remember instead of the food. Give the winners something small. Chilean competitiveness at a family gathering does not require a large prize to become serious.

A four week countdown for a US host

Shipping is the variable Chileans in Chile never have to think about, so build backwards from the eighteenth.

• Four weeks out (around August 21): decide the guest count and place the order for anything imported. This is the moment for olives, seasonings, sopaipilla mix, chancaca, pastelera, party supplies and flags, before the September rush thins the shelves.
• Two weeks out: confirm the grill, the playlist and who is bringing what. Assign the empanadas to whoever makes them best and accept the outcome.
• One week out: make and freeze the empanadas raw. Buy the produce list: tomatoes, onions, cilantro, palta, lemons.
• The day before: pino tasted and adjusted, mote con huesillo made and chilling, decorations hung, ice bought. Nothing fried yet.
• The day of: empanadas from freezer to oven, grill lit an hour before guests, sopaipillas fried last so they arrive hot, pebre made fresh within the hour. Cueca on before the first knock.

A sample menu for twelve

If you want a plan you can shop against, this one has fed a lot of Septembers: thirty six empanadas de pino, two dozen anticuchos, a dozen completos for the children, thirty sopaipillas with pebre and ají, ensalada chilena for the table, pastel de choclo as the one baked dish, mote con huesillo in a pitcher, terremotos for whoever wants one, and a bag of Chilean snacks and chocolates out from the start so nobody arrives to an empty table.

That is a real Dieciocho. It is more food than you think you need, which is precisely correct.

Getting the ingredients from where you are

Almost everything above is a pantry item that travels: seasonings, olives, mixes, syrups, snacks, bread that finishes in your oven, and the decorations that turn a dining room into a fonda. We ship it all from Davie, Florida to all fifty states, and September is the month we plan our whole year around. If you would rather not assemble the list yourself, our gift boxes and bundles do the choosing. Everything named above sits together in our Fiestas Patrias collection, food and decorations on one page.

And if this is your first Dieciocho away from Chile, or your first one ever, our complete guide to Chilean food in the USA explains everything on this table and where each dish comes from.

Viva Chile. Nos vemos en septiembre.

Questions before September?

Looking for something specific for your Dieciocho, or not sure what will arrive in time? Write to us. We have been packing September boxes out of Davie since 2020 and we would rather help you plan than watch an order miss the date.