Food in Colombia

Some observations about the food in Colombia:

• There isn't much variance in the average meal. Usually called almuerzo (lunch) or menu del dia (menu of the day), this is the cheapest meal option. The standard almuerzo would start with a bowl of soup, followed by a plate with chicken or beef (sometimes at bigger places you get a choice), with rice, a fried plantain, a very small salad that is usually either tomatoes and onions or shredded cabbage, and beans. Occasionally they will surprise you by substituting spaghetti for the beans, and eggs for the meat. The soup has the biggest variety. Sometimes it is really plain, milky soup. Other times it is vegetable soup with lots of potatoes and corn. The most popular choice is random chicken or beef parts though - definitely off-putting. The one bright note of most almuerzos is the included juice drink. Usually a blended, icy fresh fruit juice, the most popular of which is mora (blackberry), we always would look forward to it. I got accidentally ordered cantaloupe a few times. That was no good.
  
  
• Fast food in Colombia is terrible and expensive. Maybe this explains why there aren't a lot of overweight Colombians. The three types of fast food in order of popularity are pizza, hamburgers, and hot dogs. The pizza is god awful. The crust is bland, there really isn't any sauce, or at least not enough to detect the flavor, the cheese is very mild, rubbery mozzarella, and the pepperoni is flavorless and tough. Most pizza looks like it has been sitting out all day, and then they just heat it up for you. Unfortunately, when every other restaurant in town is shuttered, there will usually be a pizza stand or small shop still open, so we got stuck way too many times eating pizza because we were starving and got into a town too late for a real meal.
  
  Hamburgers and hot dogs are even worse. Whereas pizza is usually bland but edible, more often than not when I attempted to eat a hamburger or hot dog, I would just end up throwing it away or giving it to Russ, who will eat almost anything. There are a couple problems with the hamburgers in particular. First, the patty is always a greasy, gray, freezer-burned and fried mess. The cheese is the same plastic mozzarella that they use on the pizza. Then, hot dogs and hamburgers have the same common problem, rendering them inedible: the toppings. For some reason, they always put this sickly sweet mayonnaise / ketchup mixture along with dried french onions on them. It is a bad combination that results in immediate regret after consuming.
  
  
• The ketchup in Northern Colombia was super funky. Once we got south of Medellin, it was almost perfect. In the North though, it seems like restaurants try to make their own ketchup, and epically fail. It turns out to be like tomato jelly, a sweet, gelatinous, watered down, runny mess of a condiment.
  
  
• Breakfast is the most reliable meal. It without fail includes eggs, usually scrambled, sometimes with tomatoes and onions, and toast or rolls. They will also throw in an arepa (corn meal biscuit). Russ liked the arepas, I didn't. To me they tasted like wet old popcorn.
  
  
• No matter the meal, we would always ask for aji, the South American version of salsa or hot sauce. Aji is available at every restaurant, but can be either fresh or bottled. Fresh aji is awesome. It can be red with big chunks of tomatoes, onions, peppers and garlic, or green with everything but the tomatoes, served in a funny little bowl with a little spoon. Usually it is a little spicy, but never really hot like we would prefer. Nonetheless, it adds a lot of flavor to the rice, beans, salad, meat, and soup in almuerzos, so we would dump it on everything. About 50% of places we ate at made their own fresh aji. The other half the time they would serve bottled aji, a poor substitute for the real thing. Served in a Tabasco-sized bottle, and with a similar consistency, the flavor is never quite right. It is sort of spicy, but also sort of sour and not very appealing. Russ would go ahead and use it, but when we got bottled aji, I would pass.
  
  
• Empanadas rock. We had a lot of different types of empanadas. They are basically a homemade hot pocket, deep fried breading with a filling. The most common filling was beef and potatoes or chicken and potatoes, but sometimes they would put in rice or cheese. Empanadas are almost always served with fresh aji, and sometimes accompanied by Salsa de Roja, the same sweet mayonnaise and ketchup concoction that is terrible on burgers and hot dogs but surprising awesome with aji on an empanada. They are usually sold by street vendors or at counters at snack shops. A few of these makes an acceptable substitute for a decent lunch, especially at bus stations, where they are usually the only hot food available.
  
  
• At the grocery store they don't sell many US brands, but a couple things you can always find are Oreos and Doritos. Oreos are indistinguishable from their American counterparts. Doritos were hit or miss. Sometimes they would be perfect, and other times they would be super thin or completely lack the flavoring. One thing that is really popular is drinkable yogurt – they sell it everywhere – and it is delicious.