Pacific Colombian

Pacific Colombian cuisine — the food of Chocó, Buenaventura, Tumaco, and the rainforest-and-mangrove coast — is Colombia's most-Afro-Colombian kitchen and one of the least-known internationally. The Pacific Coast was settled by enslaved Africans brought to mine gold in the 16th century; their descendants maintain a culinary tradition that runs distinctly different from the rest of Colombia. Coconut milk (not olive oil, not lard) is the cooking fat; chillangua (a wild celery-like herb endemic to Chocó) is the universal seasoning; freshwater bocachico and saltwater snapper are the proteins.

The signature dishes are recognizable: encocado de pescado (coconut-fish stew with the achiote-orange color and the chillangua-pepper note), sancocho de pescado (a clear riverfish soup with plantain, yuca, corn), and tapao chocoano (banana-leaf-wrapped fish-and-vegetable bundles steamed in their own juices). The cuisine reflects a place that was geographically isolated from the rest of Colombia until late-20th-century roads — and the food preserved its African-Diaspora roots more clearly than any other region. Modern Cali and Bogotá restaurants like Cocina 33 and El Chamán are bringing Pacific Colombian dishes to broader audiences.