Arepas, empanadas, juices, among many other kind of
streetfood, belong to the Colombians typical daily diet and are sold in little tiendas
all over Colombia. We had a look in Bogotá’s old colonial centre to find some
of these little tiendas and try some of Colombia`s food specialties.
If someone of you is interested in a streetfood Tour
in Bogotá please don`t hesitate to get in contact with us. Please find below a
short summary of our experiences gained in Colombia`s local cuisine:
First stop: Juices.
In the shop “Frutería y Cafetería El Florero” we are welcomed by Misael and his
family, who have been running the business for several decades. In the morning,
his wife and his daughter visit the market to buy all fruits and groceries
needed for the preparation of juices, among other local specialties. Therefore,
they have to go there quiet early, in order to be back at time, when the first
guests arrive at 7 a.m. We arrived there at 9 a.m. and Misael explained us a
little bit about his family business. As the idea was to get an impression of
the variety of fruits and specially juices, which are an obligatory element of
each meal in Colombia, we got four different juices to try: Lulo, guanabana,
passion fruit and star fruit.
After the delicious juices we head for our next
station: empanadas vallunas, made by
Martha León some tiendas further. Again, a family business, but a little bit
larger. Martha León knows how to run the empanada business, how to get the
perfect paste and the variety of tastes loved by Colombian people. She sells
around 1000 to 1500 a day, taking into account only the shop in the colonial
old town of Bogotá. She prepares several small empanadas for us, including all
kinds of filling: meat, chicken, veggie, cheese, hawaiians, etc. We eat as much
as we can and regret that we had breakfast before.
Even though our stomachs are full, we are still
curious to get further impressions of Colombian food. The next stop leads us to
Javier, the owner of a small shop specialized in the production of artisanal chocolate. The consumption of
hot chocolate in Colombia, especially in Bogotá, is quite high, but the
chocolate consumed is often produced industrially, containing high amounts of
sugar and low quantity of cacao. Javier explains us about the whole preparation
of process, starting with the cacao plants, the roasting and the preparation of
the hot chocolate. We get the opportunity to try a real and delicious hand-made
hot chocolate with no sugar and a high percentage of cacao content.
The hot chocolate is not the only famous drink in
Bogotá. Another ancestral drink consumed already by the Muiscas, a precolombian
culture, was the chicha, a drink
produced by the fermentation of corn. In the 60’s German immigrants introduced
as a new alcoholic beverage German beer, which became more and more important
reducing vastly the consumption of the traditional chicha. The reputation of
chicha decreased and even got forbidden during a period. A famous slogan of
these times “Chicha embrutece” (“Chicha mades dump” in english) promoted to
reduce the popularity of chicha. Nowadays, chicha is consumed again by locals
and tourist, especially in the Bogota sector of La Candelaria and
Perseverancia, where many little chicha factories can be found. The story was
really interesting, even though the chicha itself had an acquired taste.
The tour is finalized in a little market, where the
vast variety of fruits produced in
Colombia can be admired and tasted. Even for those living for years in
Colombia, there are still exotic fruits to be discovered.
With full stomachs and new impressions we go back to
our office. This tour showed us once more, that there are still many places and
things to be discovered in Bogotá’s old colonial centre.
