Is Colombian cuisine finally having its moment in Australia?

The food of Colombia is more than the sum of its parts, with unique ingredients and flavours, as a slew of new restaurants in Melbourne and beyond are proving to Australian diners.

A spread of Colombian food from La Tienda.

As recently as three years ago, it took me a visit to an acupuncture doctor in a faraway suburb for my first encounter with Colombian cuisine. Today, I don't have to go far from my home to find as many as four Colombian restaurants in South Melbourne, nearby Windsor, Docklands and St Kilda East, plus a Colombian food truck in Footscray.

“Southbank, South Melbourne, and the surrounding areas, this is where most Colombians live,” says Paula Gomez, the chef and owner of La Colombianita.

And it's not just in Melbourne alone. Elsewhere in Australia, other Colombian restaurants are coming up thick and fast – there's Entrecote Parceros Sydney, Tentaciones Latin Restaurant, and Bucara Streetfood. Meanwhile in Queensland, restaurants like Latin Manna, La Arepa Brava, and Sabores CBD are all celebrating Colombian cuisine.

The growing number of restaurants reflect the increasing number of Colombians in Australia. In fact, they are the third largest migrant group in Australia, a rise up from sixth largest in 2005. Other Latin American cuisines are also growing in popularity, and like most other cuisines, changing migration trends are expressed in the diversity of food offerings.

Colombians bringing their culture and cuisine to Australia

Paula is one of the 35,044 Colombian born residents in Australia in the last census. An estimated 29,840 Colombian-born residents recorded in 2018, mark an increase of 561 per cent since 2001.

Her restaurant La Colombianita in South Melbourne opened in September 2022. When she arrived in Melbourne in 2018, she recalls going to El Toucan, located in an unassuming location inside Maribyrnong Aquatic Centre. Frank Torres, the chef behind El Toucan is credited for being a pioneer in Colombian cuisine in Australia; he opened El Dorado in Melbourne CBD in 2004, one of the first Colombian restaurants in Australia.

Colombian restaurants are coming up thick and fast around Australia.

As a struggling international student, Paula started cooking meals for her three roommates, to help pay rent. As word spread among the community about her cooking, the number of people coming to her home to eat grew to as many as twenty at a time. She started doing weekend pop-ups at the café she worked for in South Melbourne, before eventually taking the leap to opening her own.

These days her café is slowly gaining popularity among Australians who have never tried Colombian food before. “People have more of a relationship with Mexican food here," she says. "So, they think since we speak Spanish, all Latin food is spicy like Mexican food. We actually don’t have a lot of spicy food in our food. But we do have a dipping sauce called aji that’s spicy – but that’s optional.”

This perception shift is key to introducing new diners to traditional Colombian food.

When La Tienda opened in 2018, it was catering to primarily Colombian diners. During Covid, La Tienda created a Sharing is Caring campaign donating 3,500 meals to anyone in the community in need. John Gomez, owner of La Tienda attributes a shift in their customer base to this involvement in the community.

We actually don’t have a lot of spicy food in our food.

“Our market is around 60/40 now, Colombians, to non-Colombians," Gomez says. "It’s about educating and showing people more about our culture, that we’re more than the bad stuff happening in the 80’s and 90’s in Colombia. We’re moving from that dark stigma. Colombia is about sharing and caring. We are happy people and we want to share what our culture is about.”

Colombians are keen to showcase their colourful culture to Australians through food. Source: Moment RF / ©Studio One-One/Getty Images

His restaurant certainly ticks that box with its decor featuring soccer jerseys of the national team, photos of Shakira, flora and fauna, and a plethora of other bric a brac John has accumulated from his homeland. "If you’ve never been, this is a representation of Colombia, the different parts of the culture, the diversity, the geography, the artists, the sports, the music,” he says.

Carla Medina, another international student turned passionate promoter of Colombian cuisine and owner of La Herradura Coffee Stable, echoes Gomez's sentiment.

“Some people relate my country with bad things like drugs. I wish we can just move on to really good things about my country, like food. We just want to show to the whole country that we have really good food in Colombia that we want to share with everyone,” she says.

Keystones of Colombian cuisine

A great introduction in to the culture is trying signature dishes like Bandeja Paisa. It is a generous platter filled with white rice, beans, chorizo, chicharron (fried pork rind), black pudding (morcilla), Hogao sauce (cooked tomato salsa), with sides of avocado, a fried egg, and Arepa (corn cake).

“Basically, this meal was eaten by people that work the land," Gomez explains. "The farmers work 12 hours a day. They get up and eat something light. Then they have this heavy lunch that gets them through dinner.”

Bandeja Paisa is a hearty meal of meat, beans and rice.

Another popular Colombian dish is Ajiaco soup, made with three different kinds of potatoes, spices, chicken, corn, served with capers and cream. Ajiaco must have papas criollas – small yellow potato popular in Colombia. It feels like buttery mashed potatoes when you bite into it. Unmatched by any locally grown potato in Australia, Colombians resort to using imported frozen papas criollas from Colombia. In fact, many Colombian restaurants have freezers selling frozen plantains, potatoes and cassava that are indigenous to the country.

Clearly, Colombians are particular when it comes to their produce. Ingredients like beans, yuca (cassava), plantains, corn and potatoes are mainstays, together with meat with grilled meats being staples in their Asado barbecues. Unsurprisingly, Colombians are well-represented in Meatstock, Australia’s barbecue festival with Berbeo Bros Juan and Sebastian firing the grill with popular rib eyes, chicken tenderloins, and sirloins.

Credit: Food Safari

 “Colombian food is really wholesome and hearty,” says Gomez, while Paula describes it as “earthy” food. Some dishes like arepa (corn flatbread) and buñuelos (fried dough fritter) are carb-forward staples that are easy to recreate at home too.

Of course, no description of Colombian cuisine can be complete without referencing their world renowned coffee.

Sydney-based Carla Medina, another international student turned passionate promoter of Colombian cuisine and owner of La Herradura Coffee Stable recommends trying thee coffee from Tolima region in Columbia.

Colombian street food staples

Another way to get your first bite into Colombian food is through their street food offerings. In Colombia, hotdog stands serving Perro Caliente are ubiquitous. However, unlike American hotdogs with tomato sauce and mustard, these dogs are a little extra. Take the offering from Streetdogz in South Melbourne as an example – the Paco is a beef frank in a brioche bun with melted mozzarella cheese, sweet cabbage salad, crispy bacon, mustard, tomato sauce, topped with potato frites, sweet homemade pineapple sauce, quail eggs, Colombian pink sauce (similar to thousand island dressing) and tartare sauce. Now, that's next level!

To really eat like Colombians do, Medina also suggests trying hot chocolate with cheese. “When the cheese is melted, eat the cheese with a spoon. It's a delicious mix of sweet and savoury,” she says.

While the appetite for Colombian cuisine continues to grow around Australia, Melbourne's restaurateurs are happy to report people fly in from interstate just to get their cravings satisfied.