What to Eat in Bogotá: Fruits You've Never Heard Of, Ajiaco and Cacao

Colombia has one of the widest ranges of fruit on the planet, and most of it never leaves the country. If you take one thing from this guide, make it that: you're going to taste things that don't exist in your supermarket.

Bogotá also has its own high-plateau cooking — thick soups and hot drinks — which has little to do with the Caribbean food many people associate with Colombia.

Ajiaco, the city's dish

If you eat only one Bogotá dish, make it this one. It's a thick soup of three varieties of potato, shredded chicken, corn on the cob and guascas, a local herb that gives it its distinctive flavour and is essentially impossible to substitute.

It arrives with cream, capers and avocado on the side, and everyone mixes it to their own taste. It's hearty, hot and perfectly suited to the city's climate.

Other dishes worth seeking out

• Changua: a milk soup with egg and coriander, eaten at breakfast. It divides opinion, but it's deeply Bogotano.
• Tamal santafereño: corn dough with meat and vegetables wrapped in a plantain leaf, the classic Sunday breakfast.
• Fritanga: a platter of meats, blood sausage, chorizo, criolla potato and plantain. Made for sharing.
• Puchero santafereño: a stew of meats and root vegetables, more of a special-occasion dish.

Hot chocolate with cheese

This one surprises everybody and deserves its own section.

In Bogotá, hot chocolate is served with a piece of fresh cheese dropped into the cup. The cheese melts and you eat it with a spoon at the end, alongside bread or an almojábana.

It sounds strange and it works. It's the city's traditional afternoon snack and one of the things travellers remember most once they're home.

The fruit

This is where Colombia beats almost everywhere else. These are the ones we say you have to try:

• Lulo: sharp, somewhere between citrus and rhubarb. As a juice it's the most refreshing drink in the country.
• Soursop (guanábana): white, creamy pulp, tasting between pineapple and banana. Blended with milk, a classic.
• Granadilla: cracks open like an egg and you slurp the jelly seeds. Sweet and mild.
• Curuba: a relative of passion fruit, softer and very aromatic.
• Mangosteen: hard to find outside the tropics, and for many people the best fruit in the world.
• Sapote, medlar, physalis, feijoa, borojó: less known and nearly all impossible to find in Europe or North America.

One practical tip: at the markets sellers will let you taste before you buy. Don't be shy — it's part of the deal.

Where to eat and where to buy

Paloquemao market

The city's largest wholesale market. It opens before dawn and early morning is when it's most alive: the flowers, fruit and fish all arrive. It's big, loud and completely authentic.

Plaza del 7 de Agosto

Smaller and far less touristy. Which is exactly why it's the best place to taste fruit slowly and talk to the sellers, who usually have time to explain what each thing is. It's the one we prefer for introducing Colombian fruit to someone arriving for the first time.

The menú del día

The cheapest and most authentic way to eat lunch in Bogotá. For a very reasonable price you get soup, a main course with rice and protein, fresh juice and sometimes dessert. It's what working people here eat, and you'll find it in any neighbourhood.

Colombian cacao

Colombia produces fine flavour cacao, a category that accounts for only a small share of world production and is used in high-end chocolate.

For decades almost all of it was exported as raw beans. That's changing: there are now Colombian chocolate makers working origin cacao here, and a tasting lets you understand the gap between industrial chocolate and a carefully handled bean.

It's also a story about crop substitution: in several regions cacao replaced coca, and behind each bar there are communities that changed their lives.

Drinks worth trying

• Chicha: a fermented maize drink of Muisca tradition, banned in Colombia for decades and revived since. You'll find it in La Candelaria.
• Canelazo: hot sugarcane water with cinnamon and aguardiente. The local remedy for the cold of the plateau.
• Coffee: Colombia exported its best coffee for generations and kept the lower grades. Today there are finally speciality cafés in Bogotá serving the good stuff.

One tip before you start

Markets are far better with someone who knows what to point at. Half the fruits have no English name, it isn't always obvious how you eat them, and the best stalls aren't the ones by the entrance.

With a local guide you'll taste ten or fifteen fruits in a morning, instead of the three you'd dare buy on your own.