Soplada.

Francis Mallmann, a humble student ...

But first, lunch. As you’ll come to see, meals on this island of misfit Renaissance men seem to be served with the assumption that you’ve just come back from a hike across the Chilean border, or a fishing expedition on the lake, or a twenty-five-hour journey from one continent to another. “I eat a steak every day,” Mallmann says. “Sometimes twice a day. I love steak.” Lunch today is a steak milanesa, a South American staple, although instead of making it the way you expect, with the fillet of beef sliced thin and pounded even thinner, Mallmann presents a high round milanesa in which each piece of meat has the girth of a couple hockey pucks stacked one on top of the other. He panfries the steaks with a crust of bread crumbs and cheddar cheese. How good is the milanesa? You inhale two of the steaks and seriously consider eating a third.

Eat all you want. No one here is going to judge you for enjoying a steak. No one even knows where you are. Francis and Carlos Mallmann call the house on the island La Soplada, which can be translated as “the blown away.”