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In the kitchens of the Colombian capital, a quiet revolution is creating a dining scene to rival that of Lima’s, one where indigenous ingredients and local cultures are being championed to build unique flavour.
ByNicholas Gill
Published February 26, 2024
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
Chef Mario Rosero is standing beside a wood-fired grill at the back of Prudencia, the restaurant he owns in La Candelaria, Bogotá’s cobblestoned old town. The grill has three circular grates that can be adjusted to different positions. Small pieces of pork are sizzling on the one directly above the flames; a cast iron pot filled with corn is cooking less fiercely on another, higher up. Perfecting this clever, compact set-up is what Mario — a Culinary Institute of America graduate born in the Colombian city of Pasto and raised in Los Angeles — has been up to since the pandemic.
Rather than completely pivoting to takeaway, like so many restaurants, Mario and his staff started making and selling grills like these, plus home-made briquettes of binchotan, a slow-burning, smokeless charcoal. Since then, the restaurant menu has become a showcase for all of the goodies that come off the grills and smokers scattered around the multilevel premises, from house-made bacon to charred radicchio with butter-poached pear.
The restaurant, set in a former school building dating from the late 1800s, was remodelled by Colombian architect Simón Vélez with an iron-and-glass roof supported by repurposed fuel pipes. It doesn’t really follow any prescription for how a restaurant is supposed look, and the place is only open for lunch service, for which the employees are paid nearly double what most other restaurants in the area offer.
In many ways, it’s the perfect symbol of Bogotá’s culinary scene — a city whose restaurants are doing it their own way. As a regular visitor to Bogota for almost 20 years, I’ve found the city much changed: the dining scene has found its voice, matching the likes of Lima for gastronomic prowess.
“I left for a decade to travel and cook in Japan, the US and Spain, but the Bogotá I know and love drew me back,” chef Jaime Torregrosa tells me later that evening at Humo Negro, the restaurant he opened in 2021. “It’s grungy and a bit Gotham. And Humo Negro is our version of that.”
A former sous chef at Bogotá’s feted contemporary bistro El Chato, Jaime’s first standalone venture is a Colombian take on an izakaya, an informal Japanese tavern serving drinks and snacks — although what I find seems to stretch that definition to its limits. Inside, it’s dark — death-metal dark at times. The walls, booths and waiters’ uniforms are all black, serving as a canvas for an occasional bold splash of colour — from graffiti and bathroom murals backlit by neon. Separating the kitchen from the dining rooms is a stack of wood to fuel the small grill, an area above which cuts of beef and fish are hanging to absorb the smoke. Despite the rock-club vibe, the food is bright and flavourful, like the belly meat of the Amazonian fish arapaima glazed with tucupi (fermented yuca extract), with citrusy camu camu berry on a thin arepa (a corn cake). Everything is in small portions and designed to share, and with a list of cocktails that are potent with mezcal and sake it all goes down with beguiling ease.
The following night, a little further north in Zona G, a food enclave within Bogotá’s affluent Chapinero neighbourhood, I stop for a pre-dinner drink and snacks at Leo, one of the best fine-dining experiences in Colombia, as evidenced by its steady climb up The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. As a door opens, I can see into the austere dining room. But that will have to wait (I have a reservation for later in the week). Instead, I head upstairs.
When Leo’s chef-owner Leonor Espinosa decided to relocate her restaurant during the pandemic, she didn’t want the bar to be just a small area in the corner — it needed to be somewhere for her sommelier daughter Laura to flex her muscles, so she created an entirely new venue. Up two sets of stairs, with a wine cellar in between, La Sala de Laura is a totally different scene from the venue below. When I walk in there’s a jazz singer belting out tunes and bar stools scattered at one end of the dining room. The tasting menu features many of the same 50-plus ingredients used downstairs, but the big draw is the Territorio, the line of distillates Laura has created based on different Colombian ecosystems. I taste bosque andino (‘Andean forest’), a spirit made from forest honey with bright floral flavours, and piedemonte (named after a Colombian region), distilled from cacao and coca leaves that give it citrusy, earthy notes. I try No. 7, a cocktail made from a spirit distilled from the fruit of the iguaraya cactus, mixed with a coffee-like liquid extracted from the roasted seeds of a leguminous plant called pülantana, along with a fig cordial. It’s complex and strangely wonderful, proving that the slow-growing plants of tropical dry forests have just as much to offer in terms of flavour as those from lush rainforests.
Dinner downstairs at Leo proves to be just as much of a whistlestop tour of Colombian influences, with a menu based on the country’s various ecosystems and inspired by its different peoples, including the Zenú, from the north, and the Wayuu, an Indigenous group from the Guajira Peninsula in the far north. There’s spice-glazed duck with piplongo pepper, plus a dish that’s a collection of different tubers, including yacón and malanga, which grow together in the high Andes. Not only is it all delicious, but it’s also driving understanding of local ecosystems, putting Leo among elite Latin American fine-dining restaurants such as Peru’s Central, and Boragó, in Chile, which are also exploring uncharted territory for native ingredients.
When I visit El Chato, a four-minute walk away, I’m in more familiar territory. Other than a few extra tables upstairs near the kitchen, things are as I remember from previous visits. The menu, though, is markedly different. During the pandemic, chef-owner Álvaro Clavijo started a fermentation programme here. The intention was to develop new flavour profiles from native ingredients, but it has the beneficial side effect of cutting down on waste. He has also recently opened a French bistro called Selma nearby, a tribute to the years he spent cooking in France.
On shelves going up the stairs I peruse a collection of jars filled with cheese cultures and coconut and tucupi vinegars. Álvaro’s dishes usually employ just three ingredients, so a drop of fermented oil here and vinegar there adds explosive flavours throughout the menu. A standout is a dessert that uses aubergine — roasted, to bring out its natural sweetness, then pickled — for a touch of acidity to an otherwise unassuming quenelle of vanilla ice cream.
After eating, I head with Álvaro to the Thursday-night Semper Mendoza market. “It’s quite unique,” he tells me as we enter a vast warehouse packed with an array of aromatic herbs and flowers. “I’ve never seen something like it anywhere else. A market that focuses on herbs. We come once a month,” he continues. “We buy a lot of things from here.”
Álvaro points out thyme-like leaves from a small shrub called diosma. They’ve been harvested in Chingaza National Natural Park’s páramo (a high-altitude, shrub-dominated zone), he tells me, and are commonly used to flavour cooking oil. Then there’s ruda, a herb that helps with blood circulation and is added to teas to aid relaxation, although Álvaro uses it in cocktails or infuses it in aguardiente, regarded as Colombia’s national spirit. In the kitchen, they’re currently experimenting with the best way to add it to a dish with oysters and bone marrow.
As I traverse the city over the next few days, moving from meal to meal, I can’t help but notice how distinct each dining experience has become in Bogotá. There are different influences drawn from disparate landscapes, and all venues have a unique vibe. And yet they’re all saying the same thing about Colombian food and biodiversity: everything starts with the ingredient.
Published in the March 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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