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Celele

Cartagena

• Sustainable Restaurant Award 2025

Groundbreaking Colombian-Caribbean fusion

On the Pass

Jaime Rodríguez

Meet the chef: Chef Jaime Rodríguez spent years exploring the Caribbean coast of Colombia with former restaurant partner Sebastián Pinzón, meeting Indigenous people, discovering new flavours and ingredients and documenting recipes that were in danger of being lost. This research project, called Proyecto Caribe Lab, continues to inform the restaurant’s concept today, now led by Chef Rodríguez alone.

What’s the experience? Diners can choose from the a la carte menu that explores everything the Caribbean coast has to offer, accompanied by thoughtful drinks flights of regional craft beers, cocktails made with Colombian fruits, fermented spirits and wines. Around 90 per cent of the products on the menu are from the Caribbean, with 70 per cent from wild harvests. Expect to try rare ingredients like orejero (tree seeds often made into a sweet paste), guaimaro (maya nut), pomarrosa (malay apples that taste like rosewater) and jumbalee (a wild fruit).

What will I eat? Dishes include Caribbean flower salad with pickled cashews and passion fruit dressing; squid and mussels with a mussel broth reduction and plantain dumplings; the signature Celele de Cerdo of confit pork terrine, preserved sweet peppers, Caribbean beans, cabbage and pork broth; or fish salpicón, with yam and coconut bechamel and local cheese crumble.

For dessert: It’s hard to resist the creamy chocolate from La Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta dish, served with a tropical dry forest crumble and borojó gel (a sweet-tart fruit), or the yuca leaf and mambe (toasted coca leaf powder) cake served tiramisu style, with a hibiscus leaf sorbet.

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