At This Restaurant in Bogotá, Wood-Fire Cooking and Long, Luxurious Meals Are Standard Fare

Belle Cushing
·8 min read

Photograph by Silvana Trevale

When you’re on vacation in a new city, with so many places you simply must go and nowhere you actually have to be, make the day about lunch. Specifically, a long, aimless lunch in a beautiful room, the kind of meal that makes you feel at home in a place you’ve never been. Because more than squeezing in one more museum, this is the magic of traveling and leaving real life behind. And it’s what Prudencia, in the Colombian capital, is all about.

Tucked in the shadow of misty Monserrate, amid the stone streets of La Candelaria, Bogotá’s oldest neighborhood, the restaurant feels like a secret. Nothing about the graffitied façade or unmarked door hints at the wonderland inside, where a glass atrium opens the dining room up to the sunny sky and nobody has anywhere else to be.

Time, seemingly endless amounts of it, is the luxury Prudencia trades in. A midday meal here can easily stretch to four hours and have the unhurried quality of being hosted by fabulous friends in their home. In this case, those fabulous friends are husband-and-wife owners Mario Rosero and Meghan Flanigan, who designed every detail to strike a balance of comfort and wonder.

Tucked in the shadow of misty Monserrate, amid the stone streets of La Candelaria, Bogotá’s oldest neighborhood, Prudencia feels like a secret.

A long lazy lunch in Bogota Bon Appetit

Tucked in the shadow of misty Monserrate, amid the stone streets of La Candelaria, Bogotá’s oldest neighborhood, Prudencia feels like a secret.
Photograph by Silvana Trevale
The craggy Andes Mountains serve as the epic backdrop for La Candelaria, Bogotá’s oldest neighborhood. It’s known as the historical city center, “but at the same time it feels like an old traditional pueblo where you know everyone’s name,” says Flanigan. It is home to a mix of artists and intellectuals, as well as families who have lived there for generations. It’s also where the couple first met nearly 20 years ago, at a pizza-shop-slash-experimental-dance-space a few blocks away from what is now Prudencia. (She was dancing; he was making pizza.)
You may see donkeys giving street vendors an assist on your way to the neighborhood’s famous museums. For an art-imitating-life experience of the area, head over to the museum of the late Fernando Botero for a glimpse of the Colombian artist’s dreamy still lifes of fruit before heading to the Plaza de Mercado Paloquemao for a taste of the real thing. The sprawling indoor-outdoor market is open every day except for Saturdays and features stalls selling everything from local produce to freshly cut flowers to prepared food.
The sprawling indoor-outdoor Plaza de Mercado Paloquemao is open every day except for Saturdays and features stalls selling everything from local produce to freshly cut flowers to prepared food.

A long lazy lunch in Bogota Bon Appetit

The sprawling indoor-outdoor Plaza de Mercado Paloquemao is open every day except for Saturdays and features stalls selling everything from local produce to freshly cut flowers to prepared food.
Photograph by Silvana Trevale
When Flanigan and Rosero bought the building that would become Prudencia, it was an old Republican-era home that had been turned into a kindergarten that many people in the neighborhood had attended. They worked with renowned Colombian architect (and neighbor and friend) Simón Vélez to redo the space with a mix of modern and classic touches: The roof was restored with bamboo beam work and original red tile; the ceiling replaced by a glass atrium with recycled petroleum pipes; and an exact replica of the century- old French plasterwork that once graced the front salon was painstakingly recreated.
From left, dishwasher Jeyner Reyes, wood-oven chef Manuel Monroy, pastry chef Vanessa Bastidas, and sommelier William Pedraza strike a pose. For Rosero and Flanigan, pay equity and quality of life for their staff is paramount. Since their pandemic closure and subsequent reopening, they have implemented a largely horizontal pay structure and are committed to staff retention.
For courses two and three, guests are invited to the back garden, which means passing by the Hestia grill in action and getting to watch your next course come right off the flames. When chef Brayan Naranjo finishes off this wood-grilled chicken with a flourish of pickled blueberries and a green pistou, he’ll bring it right over to your table.
A slab of porchetta finished with a homemade strawberry and beetroot ketchup, alongside a plate of the restaurant’s freshly baked bread. “Every dish is influenced by his peripatetic, voracious look at the world, but what comes out is very personal.”
A Pacific red snapper that will soon be brined, smoked, seared, and finished in the wood oven. The fish, like much of the food at Prudencia, is cooked over live fire, mostly on an ingenious three-tiered model of Rosero’s own design. The couple dubbed it “Hestia” after the Greek goddess of the hearth. (The grills also happen to be available for purchase if you’re interested in traveling home with a very heavy—but very functional—souvenir.)
Rosero is constantly reading cookbooks and culinary histories, on the hunt for new wood-fired cooking techniques. “We are moved by what surrounds us—what we’re reading and seeing and talking about,” he says. “That will influence us to try a new spice or a new technique.” He pairs this far-ranging curiosity with a passion for local Colombian ingredients. In the dish pictured here, wood-roasted beets are served with miso aioli and a dusting of a crunchy dukkah-esque sprinkle made with cubio, a starchy, sunchoke-like tuber indigenous to the nearby Andes.
Out in the backyard lucky kids (and even some lucky adults) can take their lunch in perhaps the only playhouse in Bogotá designed by a world-renowned architect. The structure was the vision of Rosero and Flanigan, who tasked Vélez, the same architect behind the restaurant’s renovation, to create a fun refuge for their young daughter. “She is a restaurant kid, and she needs her own world within that,” says Rosero. It also serves as a place for younger guests—who might get a little...restless in the middle of an hours-long lunch—to romp around.
Here's a rainbow of homemade sodas—orange, ginger, hibiscus, and lavender—just a few of the nonalcoholic drinks Prudencia takes particular pride in crafting.

A long lazy lunch in Bogota Bon Appetit

Here's a rainbow of homemade sodas—orange, ginger, hibiscus, and lavender—just a few of the nonalcoholic drinks Prudencia takes particular pride in crafting.
Photograph by Silvana Trevale

The menu is set, so the only question is: What would you like to drink? Maybe a pairing of wines from Spain and California (where Rosero spent time growing up) or a journey of teas and house-made tonics? Every meal starts with country bread fresh from the wood oven. Almost everything here is cooked over fire, what Rosero calls “the most honest vehicle of cooking.” Flanigan describes her husband as “voracious, peripatetic,” with a cooking style rooted in Colombian ingredients yet driven by his ranging curiosities. Dishes wander the world, like a starter of beet kimchi alongside charred eggplant, followed by pork burnt ends caramelized in chocolate.

“Every dish is influenced by his peripatetic, voracious look at the world, but what comes out is very personal.”

Midway through the meal, a scene change. Guests are ushered outside, maybe with an intermezzo cocktail in hand—mezcal with Kalamata olive, anyone?—to a second table in the leafy back garden. Here the grill is in full swing and somebody’s kids are enjoying the playhouse. This plein air interlude allows for a better look at the grill itself, a three-tiered rig of Rosero’s own design, and a chance to chat with the grill chef as he flips chicken that will soon arrive smoky and supple with an every-kind-of-green pistou. Eventually the party will move back inside, where the meal crescendos to a hearty main, like an earthy ragù of lamb cooked in rosé. Then salad. And since you’re really taking your time, not one but two desserts, just indulgent enough: sweet potato cheesecake or shiitake ice cream, perhaps. No one is coming to turn the table or drop a check. All that’s left to do is savor the last bite of chocolate bark, sip a second cup of Malawi tea, and marvel at the fact that the past several hours have given you more of a welcome to the city than any guided tour could.

This wasn’t always the scene at Prudencia. Before the pandemic it catered to a fast-paced power lunch crowd. When it came time to reopen in October 2020, Rosero and Flanigan decided that quality of life had to come first. So they went against all conventional wisdom, raising prices, doubling salaries, and slashing capacity to a dozen or so tables. The experiment worked. As restaurants all over Bogotá struggled to retain staff and customers, Prudencia’s employees remained loyal and the seats stayed filled. The generous style of service reflects this emphasis on well-being; it feels like the staff wants to be there as much as you do.

In this reinvention, Rosero and Flanigan have built an ecosystem in which those who make food and those who enjoy it can come together for a memorable few hours that will linger in your mind long after you return home. “The life philosophy has to be clear, and the business and food comes from that,” says Flanigan. “That’s what gives the restaurant spirit.”

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit

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