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As to be expected in a city geared towards business, there are a lot of great restaurants in Cali. The restaurants covered in this post were chosen by friends and family we visited. Two of my favorite restaurants in Cali, The Market and Litany, are both covered in their own posts.
La Cabaña
To escape the heat of the city, a long drive up into the mountains towards Buenaventura and the edge of the city, there’s La Cabaña. This traditional Colombian restaurant has excellent meat and fish dishes at slightly high but reasonable prices. Marisol enjoyed her ajiaco while I had a succulent baby beef. They also have amazing chorizo.
Simón Parrilla
Simón Parrilla has very good steaks and traditional Colombian food. There are two locations and we visited the one in the south of the city. The restaurant is in a large wooden building and featured a live band to entertain the diners, starting at around 9pm.
I had a baby beef steak and Marisol had a churrasco. We both enjoyed our meals very much, but this restaurant is also out of the way. It might be worth trying their branch in the northern part of the city near all the action.
Llanera & Carbón Parrilla Gourmet
Also on the south side of the city is Llanera & Carbón Parrilla Gourmet, which specializes in carne a la llanera. It’s a lively place with good service.
We ordered a picada, which featured a delicious mountain of ribs, beef, chorizo, and morcilla (blood sausage) topped with plantain chips and served on a bed of potatoes and yucca. For dessert, I had a brownie with ice cream, which wasn’t anything special.
Clowns Deli
If you visit the La Tertulia Museum, Clowns Deli is attached to it. We didn’t eat but had a fresh grape smoothie. It was pretty good but service was very slow.
Epa la Arepa (Permanently Closed)
We ate at one restaurant near Marisol’s sister’s house one night, Epa la Arepa. It had a menu full of arepa and patacón dishes among others. We had the patacón con todo (patacón with everything), which contained several types of meat, guacamole, and salsa. It was delicious but the patacón was a little too overcooked. It’s far away from anything worth visiting in Cali so you probably shouldn’t bother coming in the first place.
Sushi Green
Located in the food court of Jardín Plaza shopping center is Sushi Green. They have excellent sushi at reasonable prices, but service for us was terribly slow. It took over an hour to get five rolls of sushi.
