The Meal That Made Me Fall in Love With Colombia

It wasn’t in a restaurant. That’s the part I always have to explain. The meal that made me fall in love with Colombia happened at a plastic table on the beach an hour outside Cartagena, under a tarp that had seen better decades, from a kitchen that was really just a charcoal grill and a woman named Marta who ran it like an orchestra.

Pescado frito — a whole fried fish, caught that morning, served with coconut rice, patacones, and a salad I ignored completely. The fish was crisp at the edges and impossibly sweet inside, the coconut rice tasted faintly of caramel from the pot it had been cooked in, and the patacones came with a garlic sauce Marta refused, smiling, to name a single ingredient of.

Some countries win you over with monuments. Colombia does it with lunch.

I’ve eaten grander meals since — Medellín has restaurants that would hold their own anywhere. But that plate on the beach was the moment the trip stopped being a trip. You don’t decide to stay in a country because of the visa maths. You decide over a meal, when the place stops performing for you and simply feeds you like family.