A damn good Bandeja Paisa @ Restaurante Santafereno

I really cannot believe I have not put fingers to keyboard and bored you all to death about this wonderful place in the all new foodie heaven that is called Brixton Village.

Maybe I just didn’t want to let you know how good the food is there, so you wouldn’t go and make it more difficult for me to get a table when we do our quarterly Colombian blow out.

But let’s be realistic here though, Colombian food is not the best in the world, it is not the most refined either. On the other hand it is big, bold and full of homeliness.

There are several dishes that depending on where you live are considered to be the national dish of Colombia.

Rolos or Bogotanos, those folk from the Capital consider Ajiaco as the number one national dish. But what do they know.

Now Paisas or Antioquenos, those happy chubby folk form Medellin and the coffee zone of Colombia know that the Bandeja Paisa is the National Dish of Colombia.

As you can see I am slightly biased, well married to a Paisa, whose only contact with other Colombians are Paisas, and having visited there on numerous occasions and lived in Paisalandia for a while. Yes I’ve been brain washed. The same as little Adele got me into thinking that all that is good in this world is made by Apple.

The good thing about Colombian food is that it can be transported all over the world, unlike Mexican food, which seems to loose everything the moment it sets foot out of the motherland.

The reason for this is that a lot of food that is cooked in Colombia, whether it be in the home or in a home style restaurant, they all use a secret ingredient. Triguisar.

This powdered spice mix is prevalent in a lot of Colombian dishes, so much so that a lot of them all do taste the same.

This is why the food in Santafereno tastes so much like it does in Colombia. It certainly has that authentic taste to it. The restaurant is also full of Colombians, who like in every other Colombian restaurant, bar or café in London long for that taste of home.

As I was saying the food in Colombia is not Michelin starred quality and never will be. They are hardy mountain folk who prefer size over quality.

There is an expression in Colombia, “Bueno, Bonito y Barrato”. Literally meaning good, beautiful and cheap. Sums it all up.

The Bandeja Paisa in Restaurante Santafereno has all the likely culprits you would expect. Chorizo sausage, slow cooked beans, fried platano, steak or normally minced meat, rice, small arepas and chicharron.

It’s a plate not for the faint hearted, but somehow between the two of us we manage to eat the lot. Well mainly me really.

I love eating at Santafereno but not on a regular basis, otherwise I would end up like your typical large bellied paisa. 

Lunch at Mondongo’s (again) – Bandeja Paisa.

For some reason, we never managed to eat breakfast today. We were in a rush to get a delivery down to Medellin before 11am. So by the time we dropped off our consignments to their relevant places, we were famished. Where to eat was the burning question. As we were quite close Poblado, and hadn’t eaten at Mondongo’s for quite a while. Well it was a set deal.

I was starving. You could be mistaken that you were hearing a storm coming. No it was my stomach screaming for food.

So it was not going to be the baby portion of their fabulous tripe stew for me, but a Paisa portion. But I felt like a change, as Lina was having the baby portion, I could steal off her plate. So I wanted to see what else they did. I felt like a bandeja paisa.

This I have to admit was not one of the better ones I have had. The minced meat was so finely ground that it was really dry. And how I crave for somewhere to serve me a fried egg that still has a runny yolk. The beans were ok, needed a bit more salt but ok. All in all I’d give it a 6/10.

What I enjoy about eating at Mondongos, apart from eating mondongo. Is people watching. And as we were in the affluent area of Pobaldo, the people are more fun to watch.

Medellin is well known as being the plastic surgery capital of Latin America, and I’ve seen all types of implants here. But to see a 14 or 15 year old girl fresh from the surgery with two black eyes and a heavily bandaged nose really took the biscuit. Is vanity reaching an ever decreasing age here. Maybe it was a present for her Quince años. Beats a trip to La Costa I suppose.

I also noticed a lot of men eating the mini portion of mondongo, and their female companions eating the full blown gut busting portion. Maybe the men are becoming a little vain themselves and dieting now. Where as the women know they can just goto a surgery and have it trimmed off. Maybe this is a public version of matriarcado.

The Best Bandeja Paisa – The Search Continues

Bandeja Paisa, is Antioquias typical dish. It’s a monster of a meal. It makes an all you can eat buffet look like its on a diet.
Unfortunately, I cannot eat a whole one now, so I have to go for the girlie option and have the kiddie portion. This still leaves me feeling like John Hurt in that dinner scene from Alien. It’s a dish where after eating it, and if you can finish it, you will need a good few hours of siesta time. It’s really suited for weekends or holidays, where you can sleep it off for a few hours.
The basic components of a Bandeja Paisa are rice, black pudding, chorizo, platano, fried egg, minced beef, potatoes, beans and chicharron. (Fried pig skin) and another piece of meat, and for the healthy part a small salad. In some places you will either get all of the above or at least 90% of it.
When I first came to Colombia over 10 years ago, I used to eat a whole portion of this, but as I have said, I can now only manage a mini portion. I think travelling in Asia too much has reduced my stomach greatly. Not a bad thing.
To say the portion sizes in Colombia are a little on the hefty side is an understatement. I know of many people who share a plate of food between two, and are stuffed afterwards.
I have eaten Bandeja Paisa in many places now, but the one I like the best is at Rancherito, a chain of restaurants that sells typical food of Antioquia. Lot’s of grilled meats, beans, chorizos. (The Colombia chorizo is quite unlike the Spanish version. It’s not spicy at all, and is very, very fatty.) morcilla, arepas etc etc. You can find them in most parts of Antioquia, but most of them are close to Medellin.
The quality of the food is always good, and it was normally the first place I would eat at after arriving into Colombia. After more than 12 hours travelling there is nothing like some good morcilla and chorizo to get you into the holiday mood.
For the real hardy people you can have calentado, which is a breakfast dish. But basically it is the Bandeja reheated for breakfast. After eating that, you’d have enough energy for anything for the day. A breakfast of champions.