It’s a story as old as love itself: Young, handsome adventurer—in this case, former pro skier Andrew Draper—travels to exotic foreign land—Chile—meets beautiful local damsel—Camila Novani—decides to stay and… opens a pizzeria?
Pizza was the last thing on Draper’s mind when he first went to Chile to ski. Draper, who made regular appearances at the highest levels of freeskiing competitions from 2007 through 2012 until sidelined by injury, was just looking for a break from a hot California summer in 2015 and decided to head to the Andes for some July turns.
“I won a bet,” he laughs. “And immediately got online to look at tickets, bought one and was like, ‘shit, I’m going to Chile.’ Living winter to winter was the dream.”
While skiing in the central part of the country, he met Novani, a fellow skier and pizza fanatic, who was born in Papudo, a town on Chile’s western border with the Pacific Ocean. As the story goes, it was love at first sight. After spending two years together in the ski town of Farellones, located just outside of Santiago, they fetched up in Malalcahuello, a rural hamlet in the shadows of Lonquimay Volcano and the home to the small ski area Corralco.
Mothballed for several years, Corralco’s lifts reopened in the mid-2000s and, today, under the guidance of another gringo transplant, Jimmy Ackerson, the ski area is becoming a stop on the global freeride snow circuit once again. Famed for its creamy powder, low key vibe and otherworldly landscape dotted with araucaria trees—which look like they’re straight out of a Dr. Seuss story—the mountain now offers with new lifts and expanded freeride zones, making it a spot that should be on every skier’s radar.
The rebirth of the ski area has also given the once-sleepy town of Malalcahuello a start incubating a tourism economy, with new hostels and cabin rentals as well as restaurants and other services. Even with all of this new development, according to our story’s expat protagonist, one very important thing was still missing: a decent pizza.
Now only a month old, Draper and Novani’s La Dolce Pizza is a humble joint at the end of a potholed dirt road in a quiet part of Malalcahuello. Due to the complexities of Chilean bureaucracy, it’s more take-out joint than sit-down dining experience, but what matters more in this remote part of the world isn’t so much checked tablecloths or Vino Rosa, but the sauce and the crust. La Dolce has nailed these and with combinations like Lonqui Carne featuring real pepperoni chorizo, jam and tocino or the Valle Verte featuring creamed spinach, mushrooms and fried onions, and the business is starting to gain traction.
“Every night it seems like we have a couple of new customers and we already have locals who come at least once a week,” says Draper. Add in the fact that Draper’s joint is the only pizza delivery service in the area—”many locals don’t own cars,” he adds—and that sweet sauce and crispy yet chewy crust, and the sky is the limit for La Dolce Pizza.
