Eat these four things, in this order
Start with an arepa de huevo in the morning, have a carimañola whenever hunger arrives, do ceviche in the afternoon from the carts, and buy your sweets last. That's the whole plan, and it's ordered around oil and heat rather than around what looks best on a menu, because street food here is a timing question more than a taste question.
We're on Carrera 7 in San Diego, and we send people out for this constantly, usually with the same three sentences. So here they are at length.
Arepa de huevo, and why the morning matters
An arepa de huevo is a corn cake that gets fried, split, has a raw egg poured into it, and gets fried again, so the egg cooks inside the shell. It's the single most Caribbean-coast thing you can eat in this city and it is completely unlike the arepas people mean elsewhere in Colombia.
Eat it early. Fried food from a cart is only ever as good as how long the oil has been sitting, and mid-morning is when you want to be in that queue. The other rule is the sensible one everybody already knows: pick the busy cart. A stall with a line has turnover, and turnover is the entire food-safety argument. One is a snack. Two is lunch, and you will regret the second one at about 2pm.
Carimañola, the one people forget to try
Carimañola is a torpedo of mashed yuca stuffed with cheese or seasoned beef and deep-fried, sold on the street alongside the other fritos. Crisp outside, dense and slightly sweet inside from the yuca. It's the best value bite in the city and the one that guests come back talking about, largely because nobody arrives having heard of it.
If you see a cart selling both arepas de huevo and carimañolas, that's your stop. Get one of each and skip whatever restaurant appetiser you were considering later.
Ceviche, but only in the afternoon
Ceviche carts appear near the Torre del Reloj in the afternoons, served in a cup with crackers. This is the one item where we'd tell you to be a bit choosy: you want a cart that's clearly busy, clearly cold, and turning over fast, because raw fish plus Caribbean afternoon is not a combination that rewards optimism. When it's good, it's cheap, sharp, and the best thing you'll eat standing up all week.
Colombian ceviche runs sweeter and often more tomato-forward than the Peruvian version, so if you order expecting Lima you'll be briefly confused. Order it for what it is.
Sweets at Portal de los Dulces, last
Portal de los Dulces is the arcade facing the Clock Tower, and the whole stretch under it is stalls selling traditional sweets of the region, mostly coconut-based. It's the only fixed address on this list, which makes it the easy one to plan around.
Buy at the end of your walk, not the start. These are made to be sold on the street and eaten the same day, not carried around in a hot bag for four hours. Ask the price before anybody starts scooping, and expect to be approached: this is the busiest pavement inside the walls.
Fruit carts, and the thing to know about them
The fruit sellers are everywhere and worth stopping for, particularly if you want something that isn't fried. Green mango with salt and lime is the local move and it's better than it sounds. Two practical notes: agree the price before the knife comes out, and be aware that the women in the traditional dresses with fruit bowls on their heads are photograph businesses as much as fruit businesses. If you take the picture, you pay for the picture. That's not a scam, it's the job, but people are surprised by it constantly and then feel got at.
How to do this without a tour
| When | What | Where you'll find it |
|---|---|---|
| 9-11am | Arepa de huevo, carimañola | Fried-food carts, busiest one wins |
| Any time | Fruit, green mango with salt and lime | Carts throughout the walled city |
| Afternoon | Ceviche in a cup | Carts near the Torre del Reloj |
| Evening | Whatever's frying | Carts come out again after dark |
| Last stop | Coconut sweets | Portal de los Dulces, facing the Clock Tower |
Bring cash in small notes. Almost none of this takes a card, and nobody at a cart wants to break a 50.000 note at 9am.
When you've had enough frying
There's a point, usually day three, where one more paper cone of fried yuca is not the answer. That's the day to come up to our rooftop and ask for whatever Chef Pedro is doing with the catch that day. We're open from 8am to midnight, there are two plunge pools, and breakfast runs until midday on weekdays and 11am at weekends. Book a table, because we do fill up.
Street food first, though. It's the cheapest and most interesting eating in this city, and it's a five-minute walk from wherever you're standing.