Catalina Restrepo

📍 Medellín, Colombia

🗣 Spanish, English

I was born in Laureles and I have watched this city change in ways that would have been unimaginable when I was a child. Medellín is the most talked-about urban transformation story in Latin America — but most of the visitors coming now to see the cable cars and the libraries don't eat with real Paisas. I do a market visit to Plaza Minorista in the morning, then I cook bandeja paisa in my apartment — the full version, with the red beans my mother soaks overnight, fresh chicharrón, ground beef, egg, sweet plantains and arepa. It takes three hours. This is Antioqueño food, which is what Colombians from this region eat. It is not the arepas and chicken you get in tourist restaurants.