What to Order at a Colombian Restaurant in St. Louis
Revised September 24, 2026
What to eat at a Colombian restaurant?
Start with a bandeja paisa if you’re hungry and sharing, an arepa con queso or an empanada if you’re not, and ajiaco or sancocho if soup sounds right. Add patacones. Put ají on the side, never in the pot. Drink an aguapanela con limón or a lulo juice.
Keep reading ↓The platter lands on a two-top and immediately stops fitting. Red beans in their own broth. White rice, ground beef, a slab of chicharrón standing up like a roof tile, a fried egg sliding off the rice, sweet plantain, half an avocado, a chorizo, a small pale arepa, and a cup of soup nobody remembers ordering. Two people are sitting there. One of them is about to try to finish it alone.
That’s a bandeja paisa, and it’s the most common first collision people have with Colombian food. The second most common happens at a counter: somebody orders an arepa expecting the stuffed Venezuelan pocket they had once, and gets a thick griddled corn disc with butter melting into it and a drift of white cheese on top. Nothing went wrong either time. The kitchen did exactly what the word meant.
Colombian cooking is a small and growing cuisine around the St. Louis metro, and it rarely arrives in the shape people picture. More often it’s a hot counter tucked inside a Latin grocery, or a bakery running a short lunch menu behind the pastry case. That changes what you can order, and when. Here’s how to read the menu, what one person can actually finish, and the three or four things first-timers get wrong.
What to eat at a Colombian restaurant?
Start with a bandeja paisa if you’re hungry and sharing, an arepa con queso or an empanada if you’re not, and ajiaco or sancocho if soup sounds right. Add patacones. Put ají on the side, never in the pot. Drink an aguapanela con limón or a lulo juice.
Colombian menus sort themselves into four blocks, and once you see the blocks the whole thing gets easy. Platters, which are enormous. Soups, which are complete meals on their own. The small griddled and fried things: empanadas, arepas, patacones, chicharrón, cheese breads. And breakfasts, which plenty of kitchens serve straight through the afternoon. Most first-visit regret comes from ordering a platter and a soup without knowing they overlap.
Want the widest view for the least money? Get one empanada, one arepa con queso, and a plate of patacones for the table, then add a single big thing and split it down the middle. You’ll taste the corn, the fry, the cheese, the sauce and the pork without hauling three pounds of leftovers back to the car.
Why is bandeja paisa built the way it is?
Because it was built for people who had already worked half a day outdoors. The bandeja comes out of Antioquia, the mountain region around Medellín whose people are called paisas, and it started as farm food: beans that simmered all morning, rice, pork, a starch, a protein, then another protein, on a tray wide enough to hold the lot. Tray is literally what bandeja means.
So the components aren’t garnish and they aren’t a sampler platter. Each one has a job. The red beans, usually cooked with pork, are the foundation. The rice soaks up bean broth. Chicharrón delivers salt and crunch. Chorizo brings spice, meaning seasoning rather than heat. Sweet plantain cuts through everything with sugar. Avocado cools it back down. The fried egg is on there because eggs were on the farm.
Two things to know before you order one. It routinely feeds two adults, three if you started with empanadas. And the arepa riding along on the tray is a plain one, small and barely salted, there to work as edible flatware more than as a dish. Don’t judge the arepa by that arepa.
Why doesn’t the arepa look like the one you remember?
Because the Colombian arepa and the Venezuelan arepa are two different foods sharing a name. The Colombian one is generally thinner, made from white or yellow corn, and served as a base: griddled, buttered, blanketed with melted cheese, or simply set beside the food. The Venezuelan one is thicker, split open like a pita pocket and packed with fillings until it can barely close.
Both come from precooked corn flour, both are old, and neither is a knockoff of the other. They just went different directions. Colombian versions vary hard by region too: arepa de choclo made from sweet young corn and folded around cheese, the tiny plain ones that ride along with breakfast, the coastal arepa de huevo with an egg cooked inside the dough. For the stuffed side of the story, our guide to Venezuelan food and what to order in St. Louis handles those properly.
Ordering advice, then. Arepa con queso is the one to start with: sweetish corn, salty cheese, a little char off the griddle. If arepa de choclo is listed, order that instead. It’s sweeter and softer, and it converts skeptics faster than anything else on the board.
What’s the difference between ajiaco and sancocho?
Ajiaco is the Bogotá chicken and potato soup. Sancocho is the broader stew found all over the country. Ajiaco uses three kinds of potato, one of which dissolves and thickens the pot, plus corn on the cob and an herb called guascas that gives it a smell you won’t mistake for anything else. It shows up with capers, cream and avocado on the side.
Stir the cream in. That’s the step people hesitate on, and it’s the whole point. Capers go in a few at a time. Avocado goes on top or gets eaten alongside. Ajiaco tastes polite until those three things land, and then it turns into something with real edges. One bowl is a meal. It does not need a platter next to it.
Sancocho is chunkier and far more variable: beef ribs, chicken, oxtail or fish depending on the kitchen and the region, with yuca, plantain, corn and potato floating in a clear broth, rice and avocado on the side. Here’s the local part. Sancocho is very often a weekend-only item, made in one big pot and sold until it’s gone. Call Saturday morning and ask whether they have it today. That one call saves the drive.
Is Colombian food spicy?
No, and that’s the most useful sentence in this whole guide. Colombian cooking is seasoned, not hot. Cumin, garlic, onion, scallion, cilantro, achiote, a little oregano. The heat lives entirely in a side dish called ají, which arrives in a small cup and is yours to use or completely ignore.
Colombian ají tends to be thin and vinegary, built on finely chopped scallion, cilantro, onion, lime or vinegar, water, and some quantity of hot pepper that ranges from barely present to genuinely warm. It’s a condiment, not a weapon. Spoon it over an empanada, into your soup, across your rice. The other jar on the table is usually hogao, a cooked tomato and scallion sauce, softer and sweeter, which goes on absolutely everything.
If somebody at your table wants their face to sweat, this isn’t the cuisine that does that, and asking the kitchen to make a dish spicy will mostly get you a bigger cup of ají. Perfectly good outcome. Just know what you’re asking for before you ask.
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What should you order from the fried side of the menu?
The small fried things are where Colombian food is cheapest, fastest and most forgiving for a first visit. Empanadas, patacones, chicharrón, buñuelos, pandebono. At a bakery counter this is frequently the entire hot menu, and it makes a genuinely good lunch. Order more than one kind and share.
Empanadas
The Colombian empanada is corn, not wheat, which makes it crackly and deep yellow instead of pale and flaky. Standard filling is shredded or ground beef with potato, sometimes chicken. They’re small. Two or three per person is normal, and they exist to be dunked in ají with lime squeezed over the top first. If your reference point is a Cuban or Argentine empanada, this is a different animal.
Patacones
Green plantain, smashed flat, fried twice, salted hard. Patacones come out about the size of a coaster, crisp at the edge and dense in the middle. They may arrive plain with hogao and ají for dipping, or loaded with meat, cheese and sauce as patacón con todo, which is a full meal rather than a side. Read the line on the menu carefully so you know which one you just ordered.
Chicharrón
Pork belly fried until the skin puffs and the meat underneath stays tender. Colombian chicharrón is a layered slab, not a bag of pork rinds. It stands up in the bandeja, or comes on its own with lime, arepa and ají. Eat it hot, because it is nobody’s friend at room temperature. It’s the richest thing on the menu, and four bites is a serving.
What does a Colombian breakfast actually look like?
Savory, warm, and paired with something hot to drink. Calentado is the standard: yesterday’s rice and beans fried back to life, with an egg on top, a small arepa on the side, often a slice of steak or a chorizo. Caldo de costilla is beef rib broth with potato and cilantro, known nationally as next-morning repair work. Changua is milk broth with an egg poached in it.
Changua deserves an honest warning. Milk, water, scallion and an egg poached right in the pot, poured over torn bread, is a Bogotá thing that people either love on contact or find deeply strange. It’s gentle, salty and unlike anything on an American breakfast menu. If a place lists it, that kitchen is cooking for homesick customers rather than for tourists, which is a very good sign.
Bakery counters run a lighter version of all this. A pandebono or an almojábana, both cheese breads with fluffy interiors and almost no sugar, plus coffee, and that’s the whole transaction. Buñuelos are the round fried cheese-dough spheres that show up around the holidays and then quietly stay all year. None of it is sweet the way an American pastry case is sweet. That catches people off guard.
What should you drink at a Colombian restaurant?
Juice first. Colombian fruit juices are the most underrated thing on the menu, built from fruits American grocery stores mostly don’t carry: lulo, tart and green and somewhere between citrus and rhubarb, maracuyá, which is passion fruit, plus guanábana, mora and tamarindo. Order them en agua or en leche. Water keeps the fruit sharp. Milk turns it into something closer to a shake.
Aguapanela is the everyday one: unrefined cane sugar dissolved in hot water, usually with lime, sometimes with a chunk of cheese dropped in to melt. Cold, it’s the right thing next to a fried plate. Refajo is beer cut with a red cream soda, sweet and low-stakes, and it works alongside grilled meat far better than the description suggests. Neither one is trying to be sophisticated.
Coffee at a Colombian counter comes small and strong. A tinto is a little black coffee sold at any hour of the day, and café con leche is the morning version. For a wider tour of Latin coffee and pastry counters around the metro, our guide to where to find Cuban food in St. Louis goes deep on the cafecito end of things.
How do you order for a table without ending up with too much?
Assume every platter feeds two. That single rule prevents most of the regret. A bandeja paisa, a mixed grill, a picada board of assorted fried meats: all of these are built for sharing and priced that way. Soups are the exception. One ajiaco or one sancocho per person, and nothing else alongside it.
A workable order for four: two empanadas each to start, one plate of patacones, one bandeja paisa split down the middle, one ajiaco, and a round of juice. That hits the corn, the fry, the pork, the broth and the fruit, and you’ll still leave carrying a container. For two people, make it one arepa con queso, an empanada apiece, and one big thing between you.
Check whether the place is counter service before you settle into a chair. Many are. You order at the register, take a number, and someone carries it out. Hours often follow the market or bakery wrapped around the kitchen, so a Sunday afternoon plan earns a phone call. And if there’s a handwritten board of specials by the register, that board is the real menu.
Where does Colombian food turn up around St. Louis?
In more shapes than a dining room. Around this metro, Colombian cooking surfaces as a hot counter inside a Latin market, as a bakery-café pouring tinto with pandebono in the morning and plating bandejas at noon, as a weekend-only sancocho operation, and as a stall at a summer festival. Searching only for a sit-down restaurant means missing most of what’s here.
Which makes the geography uneven. Somebody in High Ridge or Gray Summit is probably driving toward the city rather than finding this around the corner, while a household in Dellwood or Glendale may have a Latin grocery closer than they think, with a griddle running quietly behind the produce. Up in Bethalto, it’s worth asking whether the nearest Latin market cooks, because plenty of them do and almost none of them advertise it.
Best way to choose? Look at two or three, say plainly what you came for — a real bandeja, sancocho on a Saturday, or just arepas and coffee — and compare that against what they actually cook. The gap is the signal. A bakery that shrugs about sancocho and lights up about pandebono is telling you precisely what to order there.
If this turns into a habit, the metro’s other South American kitchens reward the same approach. Our guide to what to order at a Peruvian restaurant in St. Louis covers a cuisine running on completely different logic: raw seafood, hard citrus, and chiles that genuinely bite back.
Hungry for a real bandeja this weekend? Browse Colombian restaurants around St. Louis on St Louis Near Me Directory, then call ahead and ask whether the sancocho is on today before you drive anywhere.
If you’re the restaurant or bakery, list your restaurant.
Frequently asked questions
What are the top 3 Colombian dishes to try?
Bandeja paisa, ajiaco and arepa con queso. The bandeja gives you beans, rice, chicharrón, chorizo, plantain, avocado and a fried egg on one tray, so it works as a tour of the whole cuisine if you split it with somebody. Ajiaco is the chicken and potato soup from Bogotá, thickened by the potatoes themselves and finished with cream and capers. The arepa is the everyday one: griddled corn, butter, melted cheese, done in minutes.
What is Colombia’s national dish?
Bandeja paisa is widely treated as the national dish, though it belongs specifically to Antioquia and the coffee-growing region around Medellín. It grew out of farm labor: beans, rice, pork in several forms, plantain, avocado and an egg, loaded onto a tray big enough to fuel a long day outdoors. Colombians from other regions will happily argue for ajiaco or sancocho instead. The argument itself tells you how regional Colombian cooking really is.
Is Colombian food different from Mexican food?
Very. No tortillas, no tacos, and almost no chile heat in the cooking itself. Colombian kitchens lean on corn in a different form, the arepa, and build meals around beans, rice, potato, yuca and plantain with cumin, scallion, cilantro and achiote. Heat lives in the ají served on the side, which you control. Cheese is fresh and salty rather than melted over everything. If you arrive expecting a Tex-Mex flavor profile, you’ll be surprised, then usually pleased.
What’s a typical Colombian breakfast?
Savory and warm. Calentado is the everyday one: leftover rice and beans fried back to life with an egg, a small arepa and often chorizo or a slice of steak. Caldo de costilla, beef rib broth with potato and cilantro, has a national reputation as morning repair. Changua is a Bogotá milk broth with a poached egg, scallion and torn bread. Bakery versions are simpler still: pandebono or almojábana with a small black coffee called a tinto.
Are Colombian and Venezuelan arepas the same?
Same name, two different foods. Colombian arepas are usually thinner and act as a base or a side, griddled and topped with butter and cheese, or set beside the plate as edible flatware. Venezuelan arepas are thicker and split open like a pocket, then stuffed with shredded beef, chicken salad, black beans or cheese until they barely close. Both start from precooked corn flour, and neither copied the other. Order both if you get the chance.
What drinks are popular in Colombia?
Fruit juices lead, made from lulo, maracuyá, guanábana, mora and tamarindo, served either en agua or en leche depending on whether you want it sharp or creamy. Aguapanela, unrefined cane sugar melted into water with lime, is the everyday drink hot or cold. Refajo mixes beer with red cream soda and pairs beautifully with grilled meat. Coffee comes small and strong as a tinto, sold at every hour, or as café con leche in the morning.
How much food is a bandeja paisa for one person?
Too much, almost every time. Treat it as a platter for two adults, or three if you already ordered empanadas and patacones to start. It carries two or three proteins, a starch, a legume, a fruit and an egg on a single tray, and it was designed for someone heading back out to physical work afterward. Split it, order one soup or one extra small plate on the side, and you’ll have a properly balanced table.
Can you eat well at a Colombian restaurant without meat?
Yes, with some care. Arepa con queso, arepa de choclo, pandebono, almojábana, buñuelos, patacones with hogao and plain fried plantain are all meatless and all genuinely satisfying. The catch is the beans, which are frequently cooked with pork, and the soups, which are built on meat broth. Ask before ordering rather than assuming. The bakery half of most Colombian counters is the easiest place to eat well without meat, and it’s usually the cheapest half too.
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