Visit Shakira's hometown for Colombian feasts and fiestas

My taxi pulls to a halt, and I feel like I’m being watched. I wind down the window and a figure — one I can only describe as a monkey-like clown with a long, droopy nose — is staring me right in the eyes. He’s slouched in a plastic chair on the terrace of a roadside cafe, one arm slumped on the ground, the other gripping an empty bottle of whisky. His eyes, nose and lips are covered in multicoloured sequins.

It’s a wild sight but one that turns out to be par for the course in Barranquilla, a city whose carnival spirit is alive and kicking all year round. The monkey-clown is a marimonda, a mischievous character originally created to poke fun at Barranquilla’s upper classes but now the unofficial mascot of the city’s UNESCO-listed carnival — the second largest in the world after Rio de Janeiro. In the four days leading up to Lent, the streets of Barranquilla, a city of just over 1.3 million people on northern Colombia’s Caribbean coast, come alive with floats, folk music and parties that last all night.

On this sunny February afternoon, the beats of cumbia, a musical genre that originated on this Caribbean coastline, rattle from the taxi radio, interspersed with announcements by motor-mouthed presenters. I’m on my way to the home of Irasema Bula and her husband Fernando José Mendoza, where I’ve been invited for a traditional family lunch. As we wind through the northern neighbourhood of Riomar, a street vendor hawking fresh mango and papaya pushes a cart past houses festooned with garlands and bunting. Carnival doesn’t officially kick off for another few days, but Barranquilla is already all dressed up and ready to go.

“In this city, carnival is a state of mind,” Fernando says as he welcomes me into his home and hands me an ice-cold local Costeñita lager. “The official event lasts four days, but here we centre our entire year around it.”

Irasema, a retired teacher from Barranquilla, and Fernando, a retired lawyer from Ciénaga de Oro in the northern Colombian region of Córdoba, have been married for 42 years and have four children and three grandchildren. They live in a fifth-floor apartment in Riomar, a leafy, vibrant barrio (neighbourhood) near the mouth of the Magdalena River and the Caribbean Sea.

For today’s feast, Irasema will prepare dishes and ingredients that are the backbone of Barranquilla’s cuisine. They can be found everywhere: from home kitchens to cafes and restaurants across the city. First, she's making mote de queso, a soup made with ñame, a nutty yam; queso costeño, a white, crumbly cheese; and suero, a sour cream that’s similar to labneh (Middle Eastern strained yoghurt). We’re also having arroz apastelado de cerdo, a casserole with rice, pork and vegetables.

Barranquilla’s food is as diverse as its people — a blend of Indigenous, Caribbean, Spanish, African and Arabic influences. The dishes being prepared today are informed by this cultural blend, Irasema tells me, ushering me onto her spacious, sun-soaked balcony. From up here, Riomar reveals itself in layers. Swathes of trees stretch across the barrio, which is patchworked with football pitches and apartment blocks that taper off towards the banks of the Magdalena, Colombia’s longest river.

Swaying gently in a hammock on the balcony, I find Manuel — ‘Mane’ — one of Irasema and Fernando’s sons. He’s the owner of Barranquilla’s Manuel restaurant, which is currently number 42 on Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list. But inside these walls, Irasema is the chief cook. Neither her award-winning son, nor her husband — who admits cutting a watermelon is his only culinary skill — are welcome in the kitchen today. Joining us for lunch is Verónica Socarrás, a gastronomy guide from Santa Marta. And, as always, more family members will arrive as food lands on the table.

“I learned how to cook for love,” Irasema says, looking out towards the river as she recalls her marriage to Fernando. The recipe for the mote de queso belongs to her husband’s family, she says, and it was important for her to learn how to make it for him. But her love of cooking started much earlier, at the age of 10, when she’d watch her mother make local dishes like sancocho, a meat and vegetable stew, and ajiaco, a soup with chicken and potato.

“To make extra money, she’d cook pasteles and sell them during carnival season,” she says, referring to the classic Colombian snack of banana leaf-wrapped morsels of rice, potato, pork and chicken. As she speaks, I notice two specks of bright purple glitter stuck to the side of Irasema’s head — they’re remnants of Guacherna, she says, referring to the Friday night pre-carnival parade where musicians and masked dancers perform until the early morning.

For many people, it’s this raucous, irreverent carnival spirit that defines Barranquilla. For others, it’s the place that shaped Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez’s earlier works. Then there are those who instantly think of Colombia’s most famous musical export, Shakira. The city native has timed the Barranquilla leg of her world tour to coincide with this year’s carnival. “Her concerts bring a lot of tourists to the city,” says Verónica. “People from all over the world come to see her sing in her hometown and queue for a picture with her statue.”

The towering 21ft bronze sculpture stands proudly on Barranquilla’s Gran Malecón, a tree-lined promenade that hugs the banks of the Magdalena River for three miles. But the city’s love for its most famous daughter doesn’t stop there. ‘En Barranquilla se baila así’ (‘in Barranquilla, this is how we dance’) — a line from her 2005 hit, Hips Don’t Lie — is also the slogan for this year’s carnival. Not that I need a reminder. A neighbour’s backyard boombox has been blasting the song on repeat for an hour.

Festival of flavour

Verónica, Irasema and I head into the kitchen and start preparing the yam and cheese soup. Irasema drops ají dulce — a mild and smoky pepper native to Latin America and the Caribbean — into a pot of boiling water, along with red onion, smashed garlic, a generous helping of salt and the cubed yams. Next, she turns her attention to the arroz apastelado de cerdo, stir-frying carrots, cabbage and pigeon peas (a bean-like legume) in a wide pan.

I notice that not a single ingredient is measured. “The last time I measured anything, it just didn’t taste the same,” she says. She then adds vinegar, salsa negra (a spicy black sauce made with soy, garlic, onion and chillies) and cumin, a spice she says reflects the region’s Arab heritage. Barranquilla, like other Colombian port cities, became home to Arab immigrants fleeing Ottoman rule and then the two World Wars; restaurants specialising in Lebanese and Syrian cuisine are common here.

As the aromas of cumin, garlic and onion fill the kitchen, conversation turns to where locals buy their groceries. Irasema gets most of hers from the supermarket, except for the cheese, which she sources from the frutera (bafflingly, this is a deli-grocery that doesn’t sell fruit). Other locals wake at the crack of dawn to peruse stalls at the Mercado Público Barranquilla, a large outdoor market that feels like a chaotic labyrinth of fresh tropical fruits, meat, rice and plantain.

Earlier in the week, I’d had the opportunity to sample some of these traditional flavours on an unofficial food tour with Verónica. Our first stop was Narcobollo, a family-run restaurant in the leafy, central Alto Prado district that, she’d told me, is “the temple of typical Caribbean food”, serving the likes of empanadas, carimañolas (cassava fritters) and sopa de guandules (a soup made with pigeon peas, sweet plantain and potato). I ordered the soup, which was deeply comforting and full of rich umami flavours with zingy, peppery undertones. “That soup will cure any carnival-induced hangover and bring you back to life,” Verónica said.

We then headed over to Barrio Abajo, a Spanish colonial-settled area that’s home to the Carnival Museum. It’s also an excellent place to sample typical street food. Here, roadside vendors sell starchy fried snacks such as arepas de huevo (flatbreads filled with egg) and kibbeh (Lebanese-style croquettes made with bulgur wheat and meat). At a small stall next to the former home of Gabriel García Márquez, I ordered some patacones de guineo (fried green banana), which delivered a surprisingly savoury flavour — more potato than banana.

Our final stop was leafy El Prado barrio — one of Colombia’s first planned urban developments, constructed in 1920 — home to stately mansions, manicured gardens and a community shaped by the Spanish, Italian, Jewish and Middle Eastern immigrants who settled here. It’s also home to Mane’s restaurant, Manuel, where I settled in for a 10-course tasting menu showcasing Colombian-Caribbean cooking. The showstopper, lobster with tangerine and turmeric, managed to be simultaneously sweet, salty and zesty, while the beef cheek with pumpkin and marmaón — a couscous-like wheat — was a triumph of tenderness.

Back in Irasema’s kitchen, it's clear to see Mane had a good teacher in his mother. The soup simmers away and more people arrive at the house: Irasema and Fernando’s other son Fernando, their daughter-in-law Piedad, their son-in-law Edgardo and their two-year-old granddaughter Manuela. Young and old, everyone helps lay the 140-year-old wooden table that once belonged to Fernando’s grandfather. An ice-cold jug of juice — made using corozo, a tangy fruit that’s native to South America — is at its centre. The casserole is served on two banana leaves in a wooden dish, while the soup is ladled into bowls made in La Chamba, an Andean village where ceramics have been crafted for more than 300 years.

I pick up a crystal decanter of fiery homemade vinegar and, judging by Irasema’s raised eyebrows, pour far too much onto my plate. Both dishes are packed with flavour: the velvety creaminess of the soup is cut through beautifully by the garlic and chilli pepper, and the pork casserole is both hearty and spicy. As we tuck in, topics of conversation yo-yo between local politics and carnival shenanigans.

“Here in Barranquilla, you can eat joy,” Irasema tells me, clearing away our plates and serving up some alegría. Literally meaning ‘joy’ in Spanish, the sweet spherical snack is made with millet and cane sugar, then drizzled with molasses. For the final segment of lunch, Irasema pours us some black coffee from the Cali region in southwest Colombia and brings out a plate of enyucado, little squares of cassava cake made with coconut and aniseed. I thank my hosts for including me in such a special meal, but this, they tell me, is just something they do every Sunday.

A digestive stroll in order, I head to the Gran Malecón. It’s the perfect February afternoon in Barranquilla: locals are catching up in riverside cafes, kids are whiling away the hours on basketball courts and carnival floats are adorned with giant masks and colourful flowers, awaiting their big moment in the spotlight. I can’t resist joining the long queue for a picture with the gargantuan Shakira statue, my wait in line soundtracked by a cacophony of honking cars, excited fans and a live band playing cumbia tunes. Primary school-age boys and girls, dressed as carnival kings and queens, climb to the top of a decorated float to pose for a photograph. Carnival hasn’t even started yet, but thinking back to what Fernando told me when we first met, I realise that in Barranquilla, it never really ends.