Restaurants in Bogota
IF YOU KNOW | JUNE 18, 2021
Mariana Velasquez
WHO
Restaurants
WHAT
Bogota, Colombia
WHERE
About
Food stylist and chef Mariana Velásquez recently published her debut cookbook, COLOMBIANA: A Rediscovery of Recipes and Rituals from the Soul of Colombia. Mariana has worked on dozens of English and Spanish language cookbooks, including James Beard Award winners and Michelle Obama's American Grown. Now, in her rich and visually stunning cookbook COLOMBIANA, she brings her distinctive glamour to her own pages, paying homage to her native country of Colombia. It’s the first cookbook definitively dedicated solely to Colombian food, featuring 100 recipes that meld the contemporary and the traditional, blending elements of style, entertaining, and culture along the way.
Mariana lives in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
PHOTO COURTESY OF HARPERCOLLINS
This is my favorite place to begin the day very, very early, before going to the market. It’s this hole in the wall bakery where you can find steaming cheese spheres called buñuelos made with yuca starch. They’re insane! They’re deep fried. They also make a different version of a pastry made with corn flour and fresh cheese called almojabanas, and pan de yucas.
This is a very unglamorous place in an industrial area. You’ll get your glass of kumis (a tiny buttermilk drink) or black coffee, and you stand on the street with your little brown paper bag and you take a bite of these steaming pastries and they’re absolutely delicious. It feels so real. This bakery has had their recipes for many, many years. They’re very traditional and are one of those neighborhood places that doesn’t disappear, and I love that.
This is a big fresh food, produce and flower market. One of the things that I cherish here are the fruit stands, which are actually right in the middle of where they sell the fresh fruit. They are little stalls where you sit on high stools and order a fruit salad – you can choose whatever variety you want! They have classical tropical fruits like mango, watermelon, papaya, mangos, passion fruit … or really exotic varieties like gulupa, feijoa and guanábana. You can go all out and add cream, salty cheese and ice-cream on top. I’m more of a purist (I keep it only fruit) but it’s so kitschy and colorful and delicious – just imagine the experience of tasting all these fruits at their prime in this one spot!
Atlas Chapinero is a neighborhood bar located in a residential area, up the mountain through the winding streets. It’s a little garage with maybe 10 to 12 seats and a couple tables. The young woman there curates a weekly wine selection and has little bits and bites, but what I love the most about this place is that it’s so neighborhood-y. It’s great for people watching, and you can spend the afternoon or the end of the day having an aperitivo or a bite.
Ceviche Atómico is in a market called Plaza de Mercado La Perseverancia. It’s a very different market because although it does have fresh produce and meat it also has quite a large restaurant area. One of the restaurant owners (a chef from El Chocó, the Pacific region of the country, which is all jungle and sea, mostly populated by Afro-Colombians) opened a little ceviche stall, and it’s wonderful. He mixes all of the cuisines from the west side of the country – from El Chocó and El Valle. His food is very real, fresh, delicious, very generous ... and he’s a hoot! You’ll sit at the bar (it’s counter-style seating) and he’ll talk your ear off and tell you the stories of all the women he grew up cooking with. The whole experience is fabulous.
The story behind WOK is that the chef travelled to South-East Asia (25 or 30 years ago) to explore and research because he wanted to open a different kind of restaurant in Bogotá. There were no restaurants with chopsticks in Bogotá at the time. Asian food hadn’t really arrived. He came to realise that even though we are in the same sub-tropical region, he couldn’t find any of the ingredients. Nobody grew ginger, nobody grew the eggplants that he needed, the peppers, the thai basil, etc. So he started all these cooperatives of farmers and fishermen to create what he needed for these restaurants. The climate in Colombia is perfect for that kind of produce, and the fishermen co-ops allowed him to make incredible sushi. He started rescuing and discovering native fruits, vegetables and spices from all over the country and integrating them into the menu. The amazing thing is that it’s one of the most affordable places to eat in the city. There is always a line out the door. The food is absolutely delicious AND they have made a human and environmental cause the forefront philosophy of their restaurant. They’re amazing. Although you are in Bogotá, you’ll be having that Japanese or South-East Asian experience with locally grown ingredients!
This little shop is where they sell fresh buffalo burrata – they also make the most decadent Arequipe, which is our version of Dulce de leche. You can go there and have an oblea, which is a very thin wafer filled with Dulce de leche or Arequipe (our version of a street waffle). With the tanginess of the buffalo milk, it’s incredible!
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