Drunk and Hungry in Medellín: Emotional and Psychological Journey into the Heart of Colombian Cuisine

Vladimir
Mar 16
4 min read

Updated: May 2

The first sign of trouble came at Medellin's iconic La Gloria De Gloria Restaurant, a place that locals spoke about with the kind of reverence usually reserved for religious shrines. Twenty-five years of serving what they claimed was the finest chicharrón in the valley. Sweet Jesus, what a cruel joke that turned out to be.

La Gloria de Gloria Restaurant Medellin Colombia — La Gloria de Gloria Medellin Colombia

The plate they brought out looked like something designed by a deranged carnival cook on a grease-fueled bender: a mutant slab of deep-fried pork fat the size of a small child's torso, floating atop a sea of fried rice like some kind of twisted culinary iceberg. The whole thing was topped with a fried egg that stared back at me like a bloodshot eye. On the side, a bowl of bean soup that had clearly been simmering since the Carter administration, accompanied by four sinister-looking blood sausages that could have been used as ammunition in a small-scale military coup.

Colombian pork crackling called chicharrón at la Gloria de Gloria Medellin Colombia — Colombian Pork Crackling - Chicharrón

"Holy Jesus," I muttered. "What is these goddamn animal?" No amount of hunger – and I was running on empty – could justify this assault on the senses. This wasn't food; this was psychological warfare on a plate.

This really was a monument to excess that would have made Pablo Escobar blush – a slab of deep-fried pork fat that looked like it had been harvested from a mutant hog raised on nothing but aguardiente and spite. The thing was massive, probably illegal in at least twelve states, floating on a sea of fried rice that seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat.

Colombian pork crackling called chicharrón — La Gloria de Gloria Medellin Colombia - Chicharrón

These could be a CIA plot to destabilize South America through cardiac arrest.

But the Chicharrón was just a begging, real horror show was yet to come. The streets of Medellín swirled around us like a kaleidoscope of neon and exhaust fumes. That's when I spotted it – a street food vendor surrounded by locals, all of them consuming something called a "perro caliente"– their bastardized version of a hot dog that made the average American ballpark frank look like haute cuisine. The sight of locals devouring these monstrosities with religious fervor was enough to make me question everything I knew about human evolution. The sandwich – if you could call it that – was a bloated mass of processed meat, ground beef, and enough bacon to give a cardiologist night terrors, all crammed into a bun that must have been engineered in some underground South American lab.

perro caliente — Perro Caliente - Colombian Street Hot Dog

The Dann Carlton Hotel Medellin

Next up The Dann Carlton's revolving restaurant, proved to be another circle of culinary hell. By 8 PM, the only thing revolving was my growing sense of despair as I stared at my reflection in the darkness, picking at ribs that would have been rejected by a second-rate chain restaurant in any mid-sized American city.

"El Giratorio 360 - Evolutionary Cuisine"

"Elevate your dining experience with the city's only revolving restaurant, El giratorio 360. Offering unparalleled panoramic views of Medellín, indulge in exquisite dishes and a variety of beverages while immersed in a captivating ambiance."

This is what advertisement showed

This is the real view you get at 8pm when the Restaurant opens

Indulge in exquisite dishes, including our signature 5-star dish, 'BBQ Ribs.'

Seriously ? ? ?

The tomato soup—a wretched concoction that barely qualifies as food—was an affront to my taste buds. I had encountered far superior soup strength straight from the can in the dimly lit corners of a convenience store. It was as if they conspired to create a dish so bland and uninspired that it could send a man spiraling into the depths of despair. And those so-called signature 5-star BBQ ribs? My God, they were a travesty, a grotesque parody of what ribs should be. They tasted worse than the frozen abominations lurking in the depths of a supermarket's freezer aisle, frozen in time and flavor. It was a culinary nightmare. This kind of grub is meant for the wild-eyed, cocaine-charged lunatic on a drunken spree, a culinary experience that can only be fully appreciated while spiraling through the neon abyss. The sludgy soup and the rib meat—oh, the rib meat!—could still be consumed with a certain reckless abandon, unlike the grotesque monstrosity my dining companion had the misfortune to order. That dish didn’t resemble food in any conceivable way; it looked like a malevolent creature poised to leap off the plate and assault his face, ready to implant some alien spawn deep within his unsuspecting psyche. A true horror show of gastronomy, fit only for the damned.

the nastiest meal ever at Medellin's Dann Carlton Hotel — This isn't food, This is psychological warfare. The cartels have nothing on this stuff.

This wasn't just bad food – this was a systematic dismantling of everything I thought I knew about Latin American cuisine. Having lived in Chicago and enjoying simple yet delicious Mexican food on daily basis. The Colombians, God bless their souls, had managed to do something I didn't think possible: they'd made me long for the relative safety of airport terminal food courts. They just don't see food the way we do, even KFC was terrible, fry and too much salt.