Colombian harvester | El Chato, Bogotá

During my final days in Bogotá, it occurred to me that I had barely stepped foot inside a restaurant. It’s a sticky, flamboyant capital with wonderful food markets and outside eating options, so why go out of your way seeking cover? There was the excellent Leo a few days previously and another place in the Usaquén neighbourhood for arepas and piping hot empanadas. Still, for the most part, I remained outdoors in the gassing clouds of a sticky polluted capital, exploring the parks and alleys and marking off street food vendors, returning to the Paloquemao market each morning for my coffee and calentao breakfast.

The hot, restless traffic and cough of fumes strike against the dry daytime heat. People scatter the pavements in a noisy commotion, running, sweating, rushing, brushing shoulders with lost-loitering tourists. The energy is constant, and the people are all heading somewhere. In opposition, the roads are clogged. No one is heading anywhere. This swarming, feverish place is why there are so many sidewalk bars. Boozy pit-stops offer the promise of a cold beer and a bowl of fried pork scratchings called chicharron. Few things calm the nerves better than alcohol and salty fat. But then, the thought of a comfortable chair and air-conditioning is a powerful yearning, too. So, finding myself in the Quinta Camacho neighbourhood, I headed to El Chato for lunch.

The expectation was feverish, and the murmuring had begun. Drifting from local expectations, however, circled Álvaro out, and not in the way he was expecting

The restaurant occupies a corner unit; crazy cables and wires looping haphazardly out front, tangled above my head. I’ve only seen worse in Bangkok. Inside, it appears safer with more light, although not much more. The restaurant is moodily lit with glass-domed filament bulbs suspended like caged stars. Busy shelving units hold clusters of books, jars, clocks, framed photographs and a mass of collected bibelots and bric-a-brac. It’s like Indiana Jones’ storage locker. Bonkette seating rolls up the side wall with a scattering of small tables in the middle of the room.

El Chato

Before making his name in Colombia, Bogotá native Álvaro Clavijo pursued a global culinary escapade. His was a considered, scholarly approach, marking off international kitchens and taking what lessons he could from some of the biggest names in the culinary world. It was a slow but necessary pedagogy, leaving his homeland to become a dishwasher at a Tex-Mex restaurant in Paris before progressing to the kitchen pass. He then embarked on stints in Barcelona, New York and Copenhagen. However, the pull of home remained strong. Working with new and unusual ingredients in foreign and unfamiliar surroundings only increased his attachment. He began to think about Colombia in a new light, forming ideas of how he could harness the produce of home while promoting it through a new lens, not to a global audience but a local one.

Returning to Bogotá, Álvaro was re-energised and set about changing the perception of Colombian food. This country has hyper-diverse influences across numerous habitats, producing something like 400 plus species of native exotic fruits and a populace heavily reliant on beef consumption. Everything arrives from farms in the heady heights of high-up nose-bleeding mountains to the steaming hot valleys of Chalara and La Mesa. This presents an entire brigade or roving jugos (fruit-juice stalls) and cramped market spaces of mounted produce, rising and falling like the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta ranges – pineapples, papayas maracuyá, gulupa, bananas, avocados, sandia, uchuva, dragonfruit, pitaya. This diversity of fruit doesn’t go unnoticed by the locals, who throw the Feria Gastronómica Alimentarte Festival every August to honour and celebrate the sweet, pulpy expanse of native comestibles.

Almojabanas with cuajada cheese and cornflour

The country’s five regions each have their own valued impacts, but how could Álvaro pull it all in to converge in Bogotá? He opened El Chato in 2013, the name chosen specifically to honour rolos, a term of endearment reffering to people from Bogotá. At the time, he had to adjust dishes to make things more approachable. The ingredients here are so good, and the appetite for nourishment is such that locals are obsessed with news of a new restaurant opening, let alone a returning local, a rolo. The expectation was feverish, and the murmuring had begun. Drifting from local expectations, however, circled Álvaro out, and not in the way he was expecting.

From the go, feedback wasn’t good. Álvaro needed to prove that he could do the basics and understand the tastes and demands of Colombians. “I wasn’t expecting to break out and impress on day one,” he admits. “Colombians like their food and have close relationships with local suppliers. Plus, getting the menu to where I was confident would take time. Thankfully, I’m happiest in the kitchen, with the heat, noise, sweat and adrenaline”.

He set out his stall, reinforcing his butchery skills and French influences, and citing such provocative flavour pairings from Iñaki Aizpitarte’s Le Chateaubriand. He also lists Lluis Rovira as his mentor. But don’t be misunderstood; this is wholly and entirely Colombian, with no imports or flavour enhancers. For example, they render animal fats as a substitute for olive oil, and in some instances, Álvaro was required to visit and cook for the farmers in person. This way, he could reinforce to them the difference between certain seasonal ingredients. A case in point is corn cobs and the difference 42 days make compared with a fully-grown cob. The grilled baby corns have remained on the menu since the opening, finished with a butter mayonnaise, grated cuajada (a traditional sheep’s milk cheese made from curds – and in this case, kaffir leaves also), chives, purslane and a handful of jalapeños. Simple, with a jumble of intriguing indigenous ingredients.

Chicken hearts are another staple. Cooked on the grill, they’re served with a native potato from Ventaquemada, suero costeño (a salty fermented cheese sauce from the north) and a handful of sorrel for a lemony tang. The kitchen cleans and massages the hearts before they confit, then finish on the grill and plate with a zingy chimichurri made from sorrel stems, chilli, pickled onions and egg yolk – more lively jumbled ingredients. And there’s a brined pork shank, smoked for three days, a great heft of meat like a swollen heavyweight’s fist. Plus terrific shrimp croquettes and pork tamales, a corn-based dough wrapped in a corn husk and steamed – local market staples that simply had to feature.

El Chato is food with myriad identities, far-reaching with its influences while inclusive of all Colombia has to offer; a geographical collective not bound by spatial or terrestrial lines but formed because of them. This is bold stuff, sometimes grizzly cooking with a meaty theme and all made with panache. Its cooking is hemmed in but still celebratory, reliant on the land and supplier relationships while promoting a certain and unmistakable  Álvaro Clavijo identity. C

El Chato, Calle 65 #4-76, Chapinero, Bogotá, 110231, Colombia
elchato.co