'You get five countries for the price of one' – how Colombia became a foodie superpower.

Colombia has transformed into
a foodie capital in recent years.
CREDIT: ISTOCK

The menu called it an ensalada. This was hardly your standard Caesar, however, but a mélange of manioc root and seared beef with fistfuls of wild coriander, grapes and gooseberries, slivers of fresh paipa cheese, and a vinaigrette made of hauntingly aromatic jungle fruit. 

If a dish could have a message, what this salad was saying was a loud “welcome to Colombia”. In the past few years this war-exhausted country has come on stream, both as a diverse travel destination and as a culinary paradise whose moment in the foodie limelight follows that of Peru and, latterly, of Bolivia and Brazil. The complexity and sophistication of the new Colombian cuisine are currently riding high in Bogotá, with Medellín, that city’s grim narco past now only on Netflix, coming up fast behind.

Traditional Colombian food was and is anything but complex and sophisticated. Drawing on indigenous foodways and products, and strongly influenced by the eating habits of the Spanish, who ruled this territory for almost three centuries, old-style cocina Colombiana is an honest-to-goodness affair based on pre-European ingredients like beans, maize, plantain and potato (of which hundreds of varieties exist in Colombia). Soups and ribsticking casseroles are the order of the day – as is bandeja paisa, a platter groaning with carbs and protein which still provides the daily calorie intake of many Colombians. 

By Paul Richardson.

Full story at Telegraph.