Where to Eat in Getsemaní: Five Tables We'd Actually Book
By Townhouse Cartagena ·
Quick answer
Where to eat in Getsemaní, Cartagena: book Celele on Carrera 10c for Caribbean tasting menus (closed Sundays, reserve well ahead), go to La Cocina de Pepina on Calle 25 for coconut rice and fried fish, eat lunch at Restaurante Espíritu Santo on Calle Larga (lunch only, cash only, no air conditioning), climb to Arrabal GastroBar's rooftop on Calle de San Juan for seafood, and take La Casa de Socorro on Calle Larga when it's Sunday or it's late. From our door on Carrera 7 in San Diego it's about a 20-minute walk, the last ten of it past the Torre del Reloj.
Getsemaní is about a 20-minute walk from our door in San Diego. · Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash
Getsemaní eats well on a weeknight and it eats late. Here are five places we send guests to, with the hours, because the most common way a dinner plan dies over there is turning up on a Sunday to a dark kitchen.
From our door on Carrera 7 in San Diego it's roughly 20 minutes on foot, and the last ten of those are the stretch from the Torre del Reloj across into Getsemaní. Flat the whole way, cobblestones most of it, so wear shoes you can actually walk in. If you want a drink before you go, come up to our rooftop first: we're open 8am to midnight, there's a cocktail bar and two plunge pools, and we were the first hotel in the city to open the roof to the public. Book a table up here though, we take reservations and the sunset seats go.
One rule that covers all five: Sunday shuts a lot of doors in this barrio. Celele and Arrabal both close. Plan Sunday around La Casa de Socorro or Pepina's lunch, or stay home with us for Sunday Ritual.
Celele
· About a 25-minute walk from us, Carrera 10c #29-200 · $$$
Caribbean fine dining with a tasting menu built on indigenous and Afro-Colombian ingredients, and the one Getsemaní restaurant worth planning your week around. Reserve properly ahead, not the afternoon of. Closed Sundays. Tuesday is the odd day: lunch stops at 2pm, and dinner starts at 6:30pm, while the rest of the week runs 12 to 5 and 6:30 to 11.
La Cocina de Pepina
· About a 22-minute walk, Calle 25 #9a-06 · $$
Home-style Caribbean cooking: coconut rice, fried fish, patacones, portions that beat people. This is the food most visitors picture before they come to Cartagena and then somehow never eat. Lunch is 12 to 4 daily. Dinner is 7 to 10 on Monday, 7 to 9:30 Tuesday through Saturday, and there is no dinner on Sunday. It's a small room, so go at the start of service or wait.
Restaurante Espíritu Santo
· About a 20-minute walk, Calle Larga #9a-22 · $
Lunch only, cash only, no air conditioning, and the best value meal in this guide. Canteen-style: pick fried fish, corvina or robalo, take three rotating sides, and the fish soup comes with it. Get the coconut rice and fried plantains and drink the corozo juice. Open 11am to 4pm most days, 3:30pm on Tuesdays. Bring pesos and accept that you will sweat through lunch.
Arrabal GastroBar
· About a 20-minute walk, Calle de San Juan #25-56 · $$
Three floors of chef-driven seafood, lobster brioche and smoked marlin carpaccio, with a rooftop terrace looking out over the murals. Go up, not down. The ground floor is fine and the roof is the reason you walked over. Noon to 10:30pm Monday to Thursday, until 11:30pm Friday and Saturday, closed Sunday.
Restaurante La Casa de Socorro
· About a 20-minute walk, Calle Larga #8B-112 · $$
The old guard on Calle Larga, open-air, on that corner since 1927 by its own account. Order the cazuela de mariscos, which lands baked under cheese, or the posta cartagenera cooked down with red wine and sugarcane, both with coconut rice and patacones. It's the only one of our five open every day, 11:30am to 11pm, which makes it the Sunday answer and the late answer at once.
