Where to eat in Bogotá, the Colombian capital taking on Lima's food crown

26.02.2024 - 15:31 / nationalgeographic.com

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