A renowned Colombian chef’s guide to eating your way through Bogotá

Chef Alvaro Clavijo runs one of the world’s best restaurants. Here’s where he dines in his hometown, from traditional markets to fine dining restaurants.

Shrouded by the cloud of decades of armed conflict between the government and several waves of guerilla groups, from the 1960s until fairly recently, Colombia was largely considered a place to be avoided. Violence drove out talent and even tourism-dependent sectors like fine dining saw many people pursue careers abroad. But the 2016 Peace Treaty brought relative stability, and with it came droves of tourists and the return of previously expatriated locals. Among them was chef Alvaro Clavijo, who came back to Bogotá after almost a decade overseas and opened El Chato, which has repeatedly been recognised as one of the world’s best restaurants.

Colombia now attracts travellers eager to see its rugged variety of landscapes, sip its famous coffee and try its renowned food. But Clavijo points out that “people always want to go to Medellín, Santa Marta or the coffee region. They use Bogotá only as a stop to get to other places”. The gritty capital, however, is Colombia’s culinary jewel, uniting flavours from all over the country: from cheesy arepas to barbecue from eastern Colombia’s Llanos cowboy region, seafood from the coasts and river treasures from the Amazon. The city is also the epicentre of Colombia’s most experimental cuisine.

“Bogotá has an incredible [gastronomic] offer that didn’t exist some years ago,” says Clavijo. “You have a great variety of restaurants all over, and you can find anything from young chefs who are coming back to do their projects, to those who’ve been working here for years, as well as traditional restaurants that, fortunately, still exist.”

Here are Clavijo’s top picks for eating out in Bogotá.

Clavijo is an ardent fan of traditional Colombian food and the food markets (mercados) that serve it. Though there are several throughout the city, he highlights La Perseverancia, where you can buy fresh meats and produce, or sit down for a delicious and affordable meal. Clavijo calls the market’s restaurateurs “exporters of tradition” – a title that well befits Luz Dary Collogo, owner of the homey food stand, Tolú (Mamá Luz). According to Clavijo, this is an unmissable spot in La Perse (as locals call the market), and “a must” in the city.

Tolú serves traditional dishes from Colombia’s Caribbean coast and the regions surrounding Bogotá like shrimp ceviche and goat stew. Clavijo also claims that Tolú “has the best ajiaco (a hearty chicken and potato soup) in the city.” He adds that the spot “is a key stop on a must-do tour of Colombian food” in the chilly capital, and that he wishes “more restaurateurs would focus on this type of food”. Netflix’s “Street Food: Latin America” featured Mamá Luz – as Collogo is affectionately called – for her famed home-style dishes that fill the soul and taste like someone’s grandma made them.

Neo-Colombian restaurants tend to focus on local ingredients cooked with techniques their chefs have brought from abroad, but Mini-Mal stands apart in its obsession with tradition. For Clavijo, Mini-Mal is “the flagship” contemporary Colombian restaurant; he even questions if he should call it “modern”.

“I would present it as traditional food,” he says. “They have actually tried to rescue tradition … It’s the Colombian restaurant that has done the most to bring all of the country’s suppliers, techniques and keepers of tradition to the foreground. [They do this] better than anyone else!”

At this laid-back experimental kitchen, “you can eat a cubio (an Andean tuber) with a technique that is actually from [the region of] Boyaca,” Clavijo explains. “They don’t modify [the techniques], they put them on the menu.” Taking advantage of the country’s incredible biodiversity and richness of ingredients, the menu offers items like “dog-ear” arepas (thin maize flatbreads folded to resemble a canine ear), or braised beef topped with tucupí (a yellow Amazonian sauce extracted from the cassava root) and big-bottomed ants (hormigas culonas). For Clavijo, the spot just might be “the first [modern] restaurant that made real Colombian food.”

Prudencia – a speakeasy-like restaurant in Bogotá’s historic La Candelaria neighbourhood –   focuses on international recipes made with techniques from the countryside. Hidden behind the simple facade of a graffiti-streaked 18th-Century colonial home, this exclusive establishment requires patrons to knock on a shut door in order to enter. Open only for lunch, it allows up to 36 diners at a time. Its seven-course menu changes every month, never to be repeated; having recently featured wood-roasted lamb ragu braised in Sauvignon Blanc and wood-charred carrot and squash purée. Clavijo calls it “one of the best [restaurants] in Bogotá”.

For him, Prudencia “stands out for its technique, and its investigation of ingredients. The food is very delicious … and you’re in a really incredible ambience in which you can spend a great afternoon.” A sunroof that floods the dining room with natural light; a cosy garden, ethereal wall murals and an open kitchen create a homey ambiance.

Clavijo thinks Prudencia is a “really cool plan to do with friends” because after lunch, “you can go out and walk around La Candelaria”, the cobblestoned city centre founded in 1538 that houses landmarks like the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) and Plaza de Bolívar square. “It rounds up a perfect day in Bogotá.”

One of Colombia’s most important foods, empanadas abound in restaurants and street food stands throughout Bogotá. But for Clavijo, there’s no place like Empanaditas de Pipián, a chain with 10 locations around the city that specialises in empanadas from the city of Popayán made with fine maize dough and stuffed withpipián; a hearty stew of Andean potatoes, ground peanuts, onions and annatto. Clavijo calls these empanadas “the perfect meal” for any time of day because they’re convenient, confessing that he “can’t pass by one of their locations and not buy [one], especially because they don’t just have pipián [empanadas], but also cheese, Bogotánian (white and yellow potato and minced beef), [Cauca department-style] Vallunas (maize and yuca dough stuffed with white and yellow potato and shredded beef) and other [types of] empanadas.”

Clavijo also recommends the empanadas from Las Margaritas, a lunch spot located inside a traditional house in the Chapinero neighbourhood. Since 1902, people have come to the restaurant mostly for its signature handmade empanadas, made with crispy maize flour dough stuffed with rice and shredded beef. Though the menu offers other home-style Colombian dishes like grain-based cuchuco soup and cow tongue, the empanadas steal the show. Clavijo notes that this stronghold of tradition has reduced its hours and worries that it might close as other historic restaurants have. If it does, he wonders: “where could you take your children that would even mildly resemble Las Margaritas?”

Empanaditas de Pipián

Las Margaritas

Named after an Amazonian palm and its eponymous fruit, Açaí brings the flavours of the rainforest to the mountainous capital. “Out of all the Colombian restaurants where you can eat Amazonian food, I think this is the one that does it best,” says Clavijo. “[Chef Andrews Arieta] cooks really well.”

During Colombia’s five-decade-long armed conflict, armed groups and cartels like the Farc controlled parts of the remote Amazon region, but recent relative peace has opened the jungle to an unprecedented number of tourists, including chefs looking for surprising new flavours. In the past decade, ingredients like the creamy copoazú fruit or pirarucú (one of the world’s largest freshwater fish species) have finally become more common in Bogotá.

Because of its surprising tenderness and delicate flavour, pirarucú is the star ingredient in Açaí’s menu. Other notable dishes include the piranha fillet topped with big-headed ants and mojojoy (Amazonian beetle larvae), which are a staple food for many of the region’s Indigenous communities.

BBC Travel‘s The SpeciaList is a series of guides to popular and emerging destinations around the world, as seen through the eyes of local experts and tastemakers.