Duuude!!!!

Arriving back in Bogota after my whirl-wind introduction to the familia Bejarano-Sanchez, it was quite a relief to just cool out and relax a little bit after being on the go and jet-lagged for the past week. For a the next few days we pretty much just hung out at cata’a place and made small voyages into the centre of the city and other areas of interest to catch up with cata’s friends and, more importantly, eat.

It was during the week of self indulgence that my sinful love affair with the Colombian standard, Bandeja Paisa, began. I cant remember why we were out, but we needed a place for lunch, so Consuelo suggested a place nearby called Las Acasias, that specialised in Antioquian cuisine. Antioquia is an area in the mountainous heart of the country that is famous primarily for two things: Coffee and Pablo Escobar, the now very dead former drug trafficker who called Antioqia’s capital, Medellin, home.

Antioquian quisine is very popular all over Colombia, so you regularly see signs at restaurants with pictures of Mustachiod men in white clothes and broadbrimmed flagging you in to try the goodness. Las Acasias was no different, and as we were seated a little rush of exitement swept over my body in anticipation of finally trying the dish that I had heard so much about both in Oz and in Colombia. In spanish, the word bandeja = tray, and paisa = slang for a person from the Antioquian region, but a more accurate translation would be bandja meaning fucking, and paisa meaning massive plate of tasty shit that will clog you up for 3 days before you discharge something the size of a house brick.

This is no joke. When my plate came I actually peed just a little bit, i was that excited. This thing was HUGE!!!! Having already nailed a bowl of meat and potato soup, a couple of arepa’s (tasty lil’ cornflour patties) and two glasses of sangria, I was a unsure as to wether I could tackle this beast and come out on top. I mean, when it comes to food, I don’t fuck around. I can smash a couple of Ultimate whoppers no probs and fuck off a large pizza with the lot easy, but this shit was something else.

The plate alone was the size of the steering wheel in a semi-trailer, and was packed to the edges with rice, shredded beef, beans, a whole fucken fried platano (like a banana but bigger), a chorizo, a morcilla, chincharon (pork crackling but meatier), avocado, arepas and topped of with a fried egg. FUCK!! I didn’t know wether to cry in joy or pain. I felt like Steve Erkel fronting up to Mike Tyson. This thing was BIG. Not only big, but heavy. This thing would sink the country if they weren’t careful, and apparently in the countryside the serve ’em BIGGER! WHAT??!!!

The story goes that after working in the coffee fields all morning, the workers would be so hungry that the needed something more subsantial than bread and hot chocolate to satisfy their ravenous appetites, and so some genius paisa lady (and it definatly was a lady, cos Colombian men just DO NOT cook in the same way that Aussie men DO NOT drink vodka cruisers or UDL’s) came up with this feat of culinary brilliance. And what a feat it was….

Half way through  I was feeling full. I ate all the goodies first: the egg, chicharon, chorizo and morcilla, spicing ’em up with a little beans and rice, but that was my downfall. The problem is you are lured in by all the tasty meats, and so once youve got these down you’re already feeling pretty full. You then look down at your plate and realise youve still got a sea of rice, beans and shredded beef to get through, not to mention the arepas and avocado. SHIIIIITTTTT!!!!!

So, there I was, faced with a battle that I wasn’t sure I could win, but not ready to accept failure in a new and challenging land…

I’m not sure wether it was the jetlag or a delirum caused by an over-indulgence of fried meat, but all of a sudden I was transported back 5 or 6 years ago, to a pub in Adelaide where they served these massive chicken parmigana’s the size of a lounge cushion, topped with three different types of meat. I friend had taken me there, and I recalled watching him mop up the remains of his parmie with a slice of bread before getting up and heading to the salad bar, as I sat there with half of mine still sitting unscathed on the plate.

Somehow, seeing my friend slay this beast with such ease brought up a sense of envy in me that forced me to eat on and finish this monster off, regardless of the consequences. I am an egotistical person and dont like to be outdone. It’s not that I’m a sore loser, I just have a problem with not winning, not being the Alpha, just as all men (yes ALL men) do, and as my mind resurfaced back into the restaurant in Bogota, that same feeling from years ago came back to me as I looked around the room.

Business men were nailing their meals with the ease of experience in this cuisine, and I wanted in! A second wind (litterally. I mean, beans, c’mon?) came over me and I raised my fork and attacked the plate like a leashless pitbull in a kindergarden, relentlessly, taking no prisoners!

But, alas, it was not to be. Personally, I blame the appetisers, but that is a poor excuse, and a put my fork down and raised my hands in defeat as a small portion of beans and rice stared back at me, a sense of calm came over me: I was a beginner in a sea of champions. I had just got here, less than week of the plane, how could I compete with the stomachs of a race brought up on a steady diet of meat and beans with the modern Australian wank of gourmet hamburgers, rocket leaf and red-wine jus?

Tasty as they are, a glutton trained on this diet can’t compete with the likes of these titans. It’d be like a bare-knuckle fighter being trained in ballet!

“Calm yourself young soldier.” I told myself as the waiter removed my disgrace from the table, “You have four months more to prepare.”

And with that, made it my mission, no, not my mission, but my duty, to leave Colombia as a champion of the plate. Chefs and cooks alike would cower in my presence, and no dish would be left intact. It would be mine. Oh yes, it would be mine…..

Tags: 1, bogota, colombia, food, Travel

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 24th, 2010 at 1:25 pm and is filed under 1, bogota, colombia, food, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.