Ah Colombia - so many people recently asked me why I would want to go on vacation to Colombia and honestly my answer would be why not? It's no longer the drug filled scary place that most of us think of and honestly it's slowly becoming a culinary hot spot After a long and stressful journey to Bogota and then an adventure packed 1st day, I was so happy to finally sit down at a real restaurant to get my eat on. La Mar is located in the heart of the Usaquen area which is a lovely old plaza/square area close to our hotel that is filled with cute cafes, restaurants and bars. Allison and I are both obsessed with ceviche, so we decided that this would be the perfect place for our 1st official meal in Colombia.
It's a huge restaurant inside and their menu is just as large as the space. It is quite possibly one of the largest menus I've ever seen - I even tried to take a picture of it but it couldn't all fit into one frame. Obviously the main dishes here are ceviche-related and good god, I have never seen so many different variations on the dish in my life. In addition to ceviche, they had tons of different kinds of dishes all laced with seafood in them. I was in heaven. We opted to go for the classic and mixto ceviche and then the grilled sizzling seafood platter. Even though there is English on the menu, the waiters don't really speak any English, so there was a lot of pointing and nodding that went on.
The classic ceviche was fantastic and in true classic form is only had fish (white fish) in it. It was incredibly tangy, acidic, sour and had nice chunks of fresh white fish in it and in true South American style it was served with these large toasted corn kernels. Delicious. The mixto was similar but instead of just fish, it had fresh shrimp and octopus in it. As for the sizzling platter - it was basically all the seafood of the mixto ceviche except it was on a sizzling platter and drenched in lemon butter. I loved that it was all seafood - nothing else, no rice, no vegetables, just pure goodness of the sea.
I later found out that this is actually a chain with locations in SF, Lima, Miami, and Sau Paulo. Not that all chains are necessarily a bad thing but I was secretly hoping that this was some local gem. But that's ok, I still enjoyed myself and it was a great reprieve from the horrible start to my vacation. Total bill: $70 USD for 2 people.
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