Chapinero Alto, the locus of Bogotá’s food scene, may nearly move for London’s Hampstead—apart from the 2,600 meters of altitude, the yellow trumpet bushes and the emerald surrounds of the Andes. The broad avenues of this good district are lined with mid-Twentieth-century red-brick mansions designed by French-Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona, who reimagined Eurocentric modernism for a post-independence Colombia. Today, one such constructing is occupied by one other nationwide pioneer: Eduardo Martínez, one among the founding fathers of a burgeoning Colombian meals motion that more and more rivals Peru in the 50 Best lists of restaurants and bars.
Back in 2001, when the capital metropolis was outlined by mediocre European choices, Martínez opened Mini-Mal, which is devoted to social change through the use of Indigenous rites, and natural world from one among the planet’s most biodiverse international locations. One thousand sorts of fruit, from mangosteen to soursop, develop throughout Colombia’s greater than 300 ecosystems, which span the Amazon, Caribbean, and Pacific, and are dwelling to 65 Indigenous languages. Yet the nation had been a stranger to itself, cleaved by three Andean ranges and greater than 50 years of political and drug-related violence that solely formally led to 2016, when a peace deal was reached with the final faction, FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia).
Mini-Mal was an extension of former agronomist Martínez’s analysis into different makes use of of vegetation and animals, acknowledging the rights of Afro-Colombian communities on the Pacific coast. Descendants of West African slaves, they and Indigenous peoples had no land rights earlier than the 1991 structure. “They were guardians of all this biodiversity and Indigenous produce but they had no idea of the treasures they possessed. Moreover, they had no customers,” says Martínez. Growing coca leaves for cocaine producers was typically an excellent choice for farmers. “During the narcoterrorism of the ’90s, there was a huge exodus of chefs from Colombia. The restaurant was a platform to empower suppliers economically and help them take pride in their identities.”
At first, “rolos”—the Bogotános—have been perplexed by Mini-Mal’s elements, from mollusks harvested in Pacific mangroves to umami-packed tucupí, fermented from cassava by women in the Amazon. “Before, pasta was the luxury,” says Martínez’s spouse and companion, Antonuela Ariza. “Now it’s tucupí.”
A close-by mansion is the new dwelling of Salvo Patria—Save the Homeland—the seasonal, waste-conscious restaurant of Juan Manuel Ortiz and Alejandro Gutiérrez Vélez. Originally a café, it was based in 2011 by Ortiz, who beforehand labored in Melbourne as a barista. “I was told that Colombian coffee was the best in the world, but at home we were only drinking Nescafé,” or espresso that was “too low quality to sell”, he tells me. Traditionally, Colombians made “sock coffee”, filtered by means of a fabric and sweetened with sugar cane juice. Ortiz modified that with V60 drippers and high quality home beans from small producers—a matter of nationwide pleasure for the world’s largest exporter of washed Arabica beans. Gutiérrez Vélez, who grew up near the coffee-growing Antioquia area and had labored at Virgilio Martínez’s Central in Lima, headed the kitchen at the Salvo Patria restaurant.
“I grew up with the violence of the 1980s and 1990s so I was ashamed of being Colombian. We only had Shakira to be proud of,” says Gutiérrez Vélez, standing earlier than jars of experimental fermentations with Amazonian macambo shells and lulo fruit. “It was a conscious thing to build our identity, our culinary multiculturalism, our biodiversity. Food can help keep people out of poverty and fight the violence that arises from it.” On his menus are Pacific tuna with chontaduro, the heart-shaped fruit of peach palms; and chargrilled cubios, historical tubers from the northern Andes, on a mash of corn husk, sourced from a ladies’s cooperative in Montes de María, a former battle zone in the Caribbean.
Another Bogotá resident altering narratives is sommelier Laura Hernández Espinosa, the daughter of pioneering chef Leonor Espinosa. Leonor was named the world’s finest feminine chef in 2022 for the “ciclo-bioma” tasting menus at her Chapinero restaurant Leo, which contain elements resembling mojojoy rainforest worms, Andean cacay nuts, and pulantana, a decaffeinated espresso different from the Guajira desert. Laura headed her mom’s Funleo basis, working with producers throughout the nation. In 2021 she launched Territorio, a variety of seven distillates that use native elements resembling ardour flowers and coca leaves. It’s her approach of disrupting the state’s monopoly on such drinks, which “suffocated artisanal production”, she says from her La Sala de Laura bistro above her mom’s restaurant. She can be impressed by the nation’s ladies who’re “protecting their traditions and families”.