Escape the hustle and bustle of the city and step into Club Colombia for a feed that will take you all the way to Colombia and back. You know the food is traditional when it has a backstory and most of these dishes do. When you walk in expect lots of colour, music that will make you want to dance to your table, and lots of delicious Colombian food.
We started with a glass of sugarcane juice. They get the big sticks of sugarcane, extract the juice and pour it over ice for a lovely sweet and refreshing beverage.
A hearty soup is what you want in winter and the pumpkin ginger soup was said to be what Colombian grandma’s make to warm you up or make you feel better if you have a cold. It was beautifully smooth with the warming ginger, moreish pumpkin, with a bit of cream on top and French fries chips sprinkled for crunch.
Papa criolla is a dish of Colombian fried yellow baby potatoes. They’re an awesome little street food and each potato is bite size so it’s easy to dunk them in the sour cream and eat them in one bite. The crisp outer pops in your mouth and then the creamy potato filling follows.
For mains we had the Bandeja Paisa which was described as the food for people in the region of Paisa which is like a plate of soul food. It was a huge serving and they said the farmers in Paisa would eat one meal a day so they could work all day without getting hungry. Makes sense, if I was only eating one meal a day I would want it to be mammoth. The food was great it had beans that were hella tasty with minced beef, crispy pork belly (with crackling of course), chorizo sausage, a fried egg on rice, half an avocado, sticky ripe plantain and grilled arepa. It was definitely filling but oh so tasty.
Next we had the Calentado which is essentially a fried rice dish with the leftovers you had the night before but usually has meat, beans and a fried egg on top. Turns out I’ve been making calentado all my life but didn’t know it had a name. The one we had was a recipe from the Valle del Cauca region which had lentils, pulled chicken, chorizo, hogado sauce and coriander. It came with a fried egg on top, arepa and fried plantain which was delicious.
After eating those heavy dishes we called for strength from our second stomach (the dessert one). The tres leches was cubes of sponge cake soaked in three different milks. It’s usually an evaporated milk, condensed milk and a full cream milk. It was sweet, cakey and wonderful.
Lastly we had the Colombian Oblea which is a popular sweet street dish. It was like a giant cookie sandwich. There were two big round, thin, crispy, wafer-like cookies filled with dulce de leche (milk caramel) with mixed berries, whipped cream and mozzarella cheese. Yes mozzarella cheese. This was not unusual to me because my mum will tell you all about how she puts cheese on ice-cream but to some it’s a very strange combination. It totally worked though, the cheese just gives it a bit more bite, it was lovely.
And a shot of aguardiente to send us off. It’s a popular Colombian anise liquor which is super smooth and tastes like liquorice. Great way to end our meal.
I heart Club Colombia!
Olives x
Club Colombia
Address: 118 Queen St, Melbourne VIC 3000
Website: https://www.clubcolombia.com.au
Phone: 03 9024 0152
Trading Hours: Mon- Wed: 7am-4pm, Thu: 7am-7pm, Fri: 7am-9pm, Sat: 10am-9pm, Sun: 10am-5pm
