As referenced in my previous post, Bogota has a water conservation program where a couple of times enough during the El Niño season, certain zones have their residential water cut off for 24 hours. Lucky me that my zone was the next one up. So I woke up even a bit earlier to take a shower while I could.

After working a few hours, I set out in search of a torta pop-up which alas turned out to be closed. However, right next to it was a place on my list anyway – Restaurante Con-Ele. Since it was nice out, I opted for a table in the small patio. The menu was small but intriguing. I wanted something on the lighter side so what looked essentially like a salad sounded good.

I should say looked like a salad but with whole lotta ingredients. Candied peaches with curry spiced rotisserie chicken sauteed with honey, truffled cheese, avocado and zucchini emulsion, citrus marinated mushrooms and toasted cauliflower rice. With so many things, it might be expected that the end result wouldn’t be very harmonious but in fact it really was. Again a really interesting mix of tastes and textures – from the moist chicken to the tart peaches. Somehow it all worked.

After some rest, it was time for dinner, which was in the part of Chapinero where I stayed the first time. Afluente was a new kid on the block but had already achieved a lot of praise for its modern interpretations of ancient Andean food. I was ushered upstairs to a sleek, small dining room where I was almost immediately greeted with a welcome amuse bouche.

Readers, I’ll be upfront and confess that between the exotic ingredients and the broken English of the earnest chef, I can’t really list a lot of what I ate. In this case it was uh something on a tiny cracker – not bad and some delicious cheese bread.

Before I selected my courses, a server with again not the best English cheerfully explained to me the various Andean vegetables they use in the cooking. A very cool touch.

The first dish I selected was simply just called Pato (duck) with only 2 other things listed – a fruit, papacuya, which is similar to a papaya and uh something else. It was clear though way more things lurked underneath the green top, including the cold shredded duck which also made up the warm stock they poured over the top.

As was becoming common for my meals here, it was again a mix of tastes and textures. The duck was rich, the green stuff added a slightly bitter note that was offset by the sweet fruit. Very intriguing.

The next dish I had selected was called Camarón (shrimp). Again, while the description was vague, the end result was decidedly not. Crunchy toasted plantain strips hid the perfectly seasoned shrimp underneath and two of the Andean veggies all topped with a coconut foam. The best way I could describe it is a shrimp cereal – not something I’d ever had before but delicious.

For the final savory dish, I had selected Palmito (heart of palm) with coconut (the powder of top) and what was described as water of the apple. This was a real stunner. Each bite had slightly different tastes and textures – from what I assumed were strands of the heart of palm turned into a noodle to the rich coconut cream sauce. Wowza.

For dessert, I chose Feioja, a native fruit, with some uh other ingredients. This pic doesn’t really do justice to what again lied beneath the surface. They told me to take my spoon and dive straight down. Doing so revealed all kinds of hidden treasures – from basically a corn cake to chunks of another fruit and some sort of sauce. Sweet and sour in each bite, and once again wholly unique.

I was completely stuffed and after thanking the chef and staff, took the quick ride home. I’ll remember this one for quite a long time.