Although Colombia is the Latin American country with the most immigrants in Spain, its cuisine continues to be one of the great unknown in our country.
“What there are are Colombians from the neighborhood with the usual, you do not associate it with more elaborate cuisine,” explains the Edwyn Rodriguez, chef and owner of the Quimbaya restaurant, in Madrid. “I saw a business opportunity. But it has not been the best year to open ”.
Quimbaya was inaugurated in January 2020 And, after only two months of filming, it had to close its doors with the arrival of the pandemic, to open at half gas several months later. Like all hoteliers, Rodríguez and his partner Mariluz Head Jabba They get around the restrictions as best they can, but they have something that not everyone can boast: a unique kitchen in Spain and, perhaps, throughout Europe. Thanks to this, it has managed to achieve the first Michelin star for a European Colombian restaurant in the 2022 guide.
“In Colombia there are some haute cuisine restaurants, but until three years ago nothing was done,” Rodríguez explains to Direct to the Palate. “People looked at you as if that were not colombian cuisine, everyone was betting on foreign cuisine ”.
They were, in fact, Spanish cooks like Paco Roncero or Ramon Freixa, the first that, after opening subsidiaries of their restaurants in Colombia, began to give a twist to the products of the area. “People began to think that if they did it, why not us?”, Says the cook. “And there was a boom”.
A boom that caught Rodríguez almost 8000 kilometers from his native Bogotá: in La Mancha.
Can yucca be used in La Mancha?
As Maryluz, the room manager of Quimbaya, recognizes, Colombians are very talented. And, without a doubt, Rodríguez is a good example of this. His history in our country is not wasted.
For many years, Rodríguez worked with another Rodríguez, named Pepe, today known throughout Spain as a Masterchef judge. “I started with him in El Bohío when he wasn’t famous or anything,” explains the cook. “We did consulting projects for restaurants, not just cooking.”
“They were tough times,” acknowledges Rodríguez. “There were days when nothing came in. 2010, a terrible time ”. And then MasterChef arrived. It was Concha Crespo, then presenter of Madrid Direct –Today dedicated body and soul to the world of gastronomy– the one that told Pepe that they were doing a casting for a new TV show.
“He came back at night and we asked him: –How are you? – Nothing, they have put me to read a text, they have told me do this, and now, they will call me. They caught him. From there many things came out ”.
“All that is school on-line from Masterchef I developed it with Jordi Cruz “, explains Rodríguez. “I was behind the scenes, producing everything. It was crazy”.
But the most special job he had at that time was directing the kitchens of the Financial City of Banco Santander; specifically, the presidency building, feeding Emilio Botín and his closest managers.
“They could ask you for anything,” explains Rodríguez. “The Presidency wants hake on a skewer, and a car goes out to look for it. They want asparagus, because the driver is going and in the kitchen we are doing the setups quickly. They eat very quietly, but they make you run because they are two nonsense and if you don’t have them … AND you don’t know what they are going to eat either. Sometimes they want meat, other fish, or they have a guest and they want ham from I don’t know where … They have the driver and they go for whatever ”.
But, while working at El Bohío and all the projects his boss ventured into, Rodríguez did not forget Colombian cuisine: “In El Bohío I put the yucca in Pepe. I made some cassava timbales with Manchego cheese and Iberian prey. I wanted to surprise ”.
The conceptual birth of Quimbaya
At one point, Rodríguez decided to apply everything he had learned in The Bohío to traditional Colombian cuisine: and he did it at home, in an exercise of conceptual planning. “I started to develop and analyze what Colombian cuisine is,” explains the chef. What are the flavors? What characterizes them? We are a country of fruits, of heights, we have plains, we have two seas, transversal flavors … “
In Quimbaya not only is Rodríguez’s use of native fruits brought from Colombia (and that we had never tried), but also the use of foods well known in Spain, but that we would never have associated with Colombian cuisine.
A good example of this is trout, with cape gooseberries (an acid fruit, from the Solanaceae family) and patacón, which is served in its tasting menu. The dish came to Rodriguez’s mind after a trip to the cocora valley, in the coffee region of Colombia.
“I toured all those colorful towns that there are and in restaurants I find trout all the time,” explains the cook. “I asked why there was so much trout if we are in the middle of the coffee region. There are no rivers, nothing. And they tell me that we are around the snowy park, that they have three high peaks of volcanoes, and the thaw has generated cold water lagoons that are conducive to trout. The assembly of the plate is a small circle that reflects the lagoon of the trout, and around the patacón. And so we tell the story. It is a dish inspired by the valley ”.
East conceptualization work It is common to almost all the dishes served in the restaurant, a work that Rodríguez put black on soft many years before, on a web page where he posted his creations, which was the germ of Quimbaya.
“Shortly after opening the website, they called me from the Procolombia office in Seoul,” explains Rodríguez. “The Pacific Treaty was signed and they asked me to go to make avant-garde Colombian cuisine, because they had seen that he did it ”.
Since in South Korea it is impossible to get Latin products beyond cassava or plantain, Rodríguez had to go loaded from Madrid with 50 kilos of product in suitcases that they took out as a diplomatic bag. His kitchen was a success and, as a result of this experience, the Colombian embassy in Madrid hired him as official chef for their events.
“I made many meals for prosecutors, ministers and even the dinner they served the day they gave Colombian nationality to Felipe Gonzalez “, says Rodríguez, always ready to tell a good anecdote. “It was a way of testing the dishes, to see acceptance. The Colombian public accepts it because they are flavors they are used to, but for the Spanish public they are not familiar flavors. And yet they were quite accepted. “
Despite this, Rodríguez did not decide to open a restaurant until several years later, when he left El Bohío and went to work in London: “I saw another way of working the product, how they work the fermented ones, the kitchen 0 km, how they handle the pickles … It gives you another way of seeing gastronomy”.
He then thought of opening Quimbaya in the capital of the United Kingdom, but the enormous cost of the license (120,000 pounds) and the arrival of the Brexit they tipped the balance towards Madrid.
A piece of Colombia in Madrid
“When we plan this we thought that everything was a piece of Colombia, not a Colombian restaurant, ”explains Rodríguez.
In the background music only Colombian artists sound (and chosen with good taste, something that is not abundant in restaurants), much of the tableware is made by indigenous artisans and, at all times, the explanations try to show us the culture of a country as close to Spain as it is unknown.
Head Jabba, the room manager, is an excellent hostess, who makes a great effort – even more so with a mask – to take the diner to the place where each dish is inspired. “When we were designing Quimbaya, because it was a whole process of creation starting from its kitchen, we wanted it to have something different, that it was not a restaurant like the others, that we had our own label,” he explains. “Looking for this If I had to contribute something, it was that theatrical vein, and that spirit that he brought thinking that this is a stage and the client is the public, who are experiencing the show of the set-up, plate-to-plate, live and it has to arrive with that same magic, with that emotion ”.
Now this couple of entrepreneurs only hope that all the work and enthusiasm poured into the project will manage to survive the pandemic. In the beginning, the whole concept of Quimbaya was thought around the tasting menus, necessary to make the entire trip through Colombia, but in recent weeks they have added a letter from Tuesday to Thursday, to attract more public.
And, despite the difficulties, the spirit to continue surprising has not waned. In November the restaurant will launch a new menu, called “Mestizaje”, which revolves around the influences that Colombian cuisine has received from the rest of Latin America and Spain. A whole set of new dishes that will surely deserve another visit.
What to ask for: Although currently Quimbaya has a menu, it is worth trying the tasting menu, which is priced at 65 euros more than reasonable. Good cocktails and a tight wine list are also offered, but one that delivers.
A previous version of this article was published on October 17, 2020. We have recovered it after winning Quimbaya its first Michelin star.
Practical data
Where: Calle Zurbano, 63. Madrid.
Half price: 80 euros.
Bookings: 912 401 896 and on its website.
Schedules: Closed Sunday and Monday.