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Food guide

How to find good Colombian food

Colombian food is regional to a degree that surprises people: the coast eats coconut rice and fried fish, Bogotá eats a chicken and potato soup with capers and cream, and Medellín eats a platter with nine components and a fried egg on top.

What separates a good one from a bad one

  • Arepas made there — Colombian arepas are thinner and less stuffed than Venezuelan ones, often griddled and topped rather than split. Made fresh they are soft inside.
  • Three potatoes in the ajiaco — The Bogotá soup depends on using several potato varieties, one of which dissolves to thicken it. One potato means a shortcut.
  • Guascas — The herb that makes ajiaco taste like ajiaco. Hard to source and its presence signals a serious kitchen.
  • A bandeja paisa that is genuinely excessive — Beans, rice, chicharrón, chorizo, morcilla, steak, plantain, avocado, arepa and a fried egg. If it looks reasonable, something is missing.
  • Fresh juices — Lulo, maracuyá, guanábana, mora. A long fruit-juice list is standard and its absence is notable.

What to order

  • Bandeja paisa — Once. Bring an appetite and expect to fail.
  • Ajiaco santafereño — Chicken and potato soup with corn, capers and cream. The best thing on most Colombian menus.
  • Arepa de choclo — Sweet corn arepa with cheese. Different from the plain ones and worth ordering separately.
  • Sancocho — Weekend stew, regionally variable, always substantial.
  • Lulo juice — A citrus you will not have had. Ask for it in water rather than milk the first time.

Where to find Colombian food

Open listings put 988 Colombian restaurants across the US. These are the cities and campuses with the most of them.

Cities with the most

New York, NY 54 Miami, FL 41 Elizabeth, NJ 34 Tampa, FL 20 Orlando, FL 20 Chicago, IL 20 Hialeah, FL 16 Houston, TX 13 Paterson, NJ 12 West New York, NJ 11 Charlotte, NC 11 Hollywood, FL 10

Campuses with the most within a mile

LaGuardia 6 MDC 5 Kean 5 RACC 4 FIT 4 Touro University 3 FIU 3 FDU 3 CUNY Graduate Center 3 University of Massachusetts-Lowell 2

A few to start with

Counts are listings in Overture Maps open data (September 2026), counted by the town in each address. Independent places only in the examples above, and they are a starting point rather than a ranking.

How Savor Scout looks for it

Colombian searches read for regional dish names and for bakery and juice-bar language, since a lot of Colombian food is sold from panaderías rather than restaurants. Ajiaco and guascas mentions are treated as strong signals of a kitchen cooking the Bogotá tradition rather than a general Latin menu.

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Looking in a particular city?

Each of these opens Savor Scout with the location already set, so you can say what you want and it searches from there. It covers 1,000 US cities in total — these are simply the largest.

All 1,000 cities →

When you might want this

Where to eat with a big group Where to eat when you're broke What to eat on a cold rainy night