Eating in Kennedy: 3 Kitchens That Survive the Turn of the Century

Kennedy's culinary identity isn't on the avenue, it's in the homes

If you ask a Bogotano where to eat in Kennedy, they'll most likely mention a shopping mall or a rotisserie chicken spot on Avenida Boyacá. And sure, there are options there, but the true gastronomic memory of this locality —the one that has resisted since the late 20th century— isn't advertised with neon billboards. It's hidden in the backyards of homes, in garages converted into kitchens, and on corners where oil has been boiling since 6 in the morning.

Kennedy, with its over one million inhabitants, is a melting pot of internal migrations. Families from Boyacá, Cundinamarca, Tolima, and Santander arrived in the 60s and 70s, bringing with them recipes that fused here with what was available: papa criolla, guasca, curuba, and the need to stretch the grocery budget. Today, in August 2026, those kitchens are still alive, but they're fighting against delivery chains and the generational shift that prefers selling the business to a fast-food operator.

This article is not a list of trendy restaurants. It's a tribute to three kitchens that survive the turn of the century: grandma's ajiaco, the corner fritanga, and the traditional curuba juice. Three stories, three families, and one same question: how much longer can they hold on?

Grandma's ajiaco kitchen: the stew that refuses to die

In the Marsella neighborhood, three blocks from Parque Timiza, is Doña Gloria's house. She's been selling ajiaco on weekends for 38 years, but not in a restaurant: in her dining room, with plastic tablecloths and a pot that looks like it's from another century. She's from Sogamoso, Boyacá, and arrived in Bogotá in 1978 with her mom and three brothers. The ajiaco she prepares isn't like the one from the Zona G restaurants, the kind served with cream and capers on a designer plate. Doña Gloria's is the pot ajiaco, the one eaten on Sundays after mass.

The story of the family behind the stew

Doña Gloria learned the recipe from her mother, who in turn learned it from her grandmother in a town where the cold was warded off with guasca and papa criolla. When she arrived in Kennedy, the neighborhood was empty land, and on Sundays you could smell the charcoal from the neighboring houses. She started selling ajiaco to the construction workers building the El Amparo neighborhood. She charged them 200 pesos for a plate that today, adjusted for 2026 inflation, would be a steal. But back then, there was no money for more.

Today, Doña Gloria's ajiaco costs 18,000 Colombian pesos. It includes three pieces of chicken, corn on the cob, papa criolla, papa sabanera, and papa pastusa —all three, because that's how the stew thickens—, capers, cream, and avocado. But what really sets it apart is the guasca. She grows it in a planter at the back of the yard, because she says the one sold in the markets no longer smells the same. "The guasca nowadays is from greenhouses, it doesn't have that thing that cold earth gives it," she told me as she stirred the pot with a wooden ladle that's older than her children.

The original recipe and the ingredients that are no longer available

The secret to Doña Gloria's ajiaco isn't in expensive ingredients, but in one that almost no one uses anymore: hogao made with cebolla junca and tomate chonto, not export tomatoes. That tomate chonto, small and acidic, no longer reaches the markets of Kennedy as frequently as before. Distributors prefer selling long-life tomatoes to supermarkets. Doña Gloria has to send her grandson to Plaza de Paloquemao every Saturday at 4 in the morning to hunt for the last boxes of tomate chonto arriving from Fusagasugá.

Another ingredient that's become hard to find is real papa criolla, the kind that's intensely yellow and falls apart when you touch it. The one you find now in supermarkets is a hybrid variety that doesn't thicken the same way. That's why Doña Gloria buys her papa criolla from a farmer in Zipaquirá who brings her sacks every 15 days. "If that man fails me, I don't make ajiaco that week. I'd rather not make it than sell something that isn't right," she says with a firmness that leaves no room for argument.

The current price and the standoff with the chains

The 18,000 pesos Doña Gloria charges for her ajiaco are, in August 2026, a reference price that doesn't include delivery. You eat it at her house, in a dining room that seats 12 people. Sometimes you have to wait for a table, but that's part of the experience. In comparison, an ajiaco at a restaurant on Calle 85 can cost 45,000 pesos, and one from a fast-food chain in a shopping mall in Kennedy goes for around 25,000, but with bagged shredded chicken and powdered guasca.

The question is whether this model can hold up. Doña Gloria's grandson, 24, is studying systems engineering and doesn't want to inherit the pot. "That doesn't make money," he says, even though his grandmother's house is paid off, his cousins studied with the ajiaco profits, and the neighbor next door buys the stew to go every Sunday. Kennedy's traditional cooking isn't a high-margin business, but it is a business of social sustainability: it supports a family, feeds a neighborhood, and preserves a recipe that doesn't appear in gourmet cookbooks.

The corner fritanga: the resistance of oil and corn

Two kilometers from Doña Gloria's house, in the Kennedy Central neighborhood, is Don Pedro's fritanga. It has no name on the facade. It's a 4-meter-wide storefront with a glass display case holding the empanadas, chicken pasteles, papas rellenas, and buñuelos. Don Pedro is from Ibagué, arrived in Bogotá in 1995 with a suitcase and his mother's recipe that wrapped the empanada filling with a touch of cumin that no one here used. That difference, that cumin, gave his fritanga its identity.

The business that started with a basket

Don Pedro didn't start with a storefront. He started with a wicker basket he carried on his head, selling empanadas outside his kids' school. He made them in his home kitchen, which was a rented room in the El Vergel neighborhood. In 1998, with three years of savings, he rented the corner spot where he still is today. His wife, Doña Nubia, makes the dough with yellow corn that they grind themselves in a manual mill they brought from Tolima. That corn, they say, isn't the same as what you find in Bogotá anymore.

The ingredients that disappeared from the market

The corn they use for the empanadas is maíz peto, but not the kind sold in bags at supermarkets. They buy corn on the cob from a supplier in Melgar who comes every Tuesday. The problem is that supplier, who is already 68, says this year was his last planting because it's no longer profitable. Native corn has been displaced by transgenic varieties that yield more per hectare but, according to Don Pedro, "taste like cardboard."

Another ingredient that's scarce is the papa pastusa for the papa rellena. The one available now is more floury and falls apart when fried. Don Pedro has had to change his recipe, but he doesn't want to change the flavor. "The papa rellena of before had a juicy meat heart, not that dry thing they make now," he says while showing a freshly fried papa rellena. His trick to keep it juicy is adding a bit of beef rib broth to the filling meat, a secret he learned from his grandmother and doesn't plan to reveal to anyone else.

The current price and the competition with delivery

In August 2026, an empanada at Don Pedro's fritanga costs 3,500 pesos. A papa rellena, 6,000. A chicken pastel, 5,000. These are reference prices that haven't gone up much because Don Pedro knows his clientele is from the neighborhood, people who can't pay 12,000 pesos for a hipster restaurant empanada. But the delivery chains have hit him hard: Rappi and other platforms offer "gourmet empanadas" with melted cheese and signature sauces for similar prices, and young people prefer ordering on their phones to walking to the corner.

Don Pedro doesn't have his own delivery service. "I can't afford the platform commissions," he says. His only sales channel is the counter, and his best advertising is the smell coming from the oil at 5 in the afternoon. That smell, mixed with the gasoline from the avenue, is the smell of resistance.

Traditional curuba juice: the drink that is being lost

The third kitchen surviving the turn of the century in Kennedy isn't a dish, it's a drink. At the Plaza de Mercado de Kennedy, stall 47, Doña Rosalba has been selling curuba juice since 1987. Her stall is a granite counter with three industrial blenders that have more patches than the road to La Calera. She's from Vélez, Santander, and arrived in Bogotá fleeing violence. Her curuba juice isn't like the one from trendy coffee shops: no brown sugar or flavored ice. It's curuba, water, ice, and rasped panela. Nothing else.

The story of curuba in the plaza

When Doña Rosalba started, the Plaza de Mercado de Kennedy was the heart of the locality. People came to do their grocery shopping on Saturdays and sat down for juice while kids ran between the stalls. She used to sell up to 200 glasses a day, at 500 pesos each. Today she sells 30, at 4,000 pesos. The competition isn't other plazas, but convenience stores and packaged juice vending machines installed in nearby shopping malls.

The curuba she uses isn't the same anymore. She used to buy curuba from her homeland, which arrived at the plaza in wooden crates, with an aroma you could smell two stalls away. Now, most of the curuba reaching Bogotá is from Boyacá farms, bigger and with a thicker skin, but with less pulp and less flavor. "The curuba of before was small, wrinkled, ugly, but sweet. This one now is pretty and tastes like nothing," she complains while peeling one with a knife she's sharpened a thousand times.

The original recipe and the panela problem

Doña Rosalba's curuba juice has a secret: rasped panela, not panela dissolved in water. She rasps a piece of panela over the glass before blending, so small crystals remain that you feel when drinking. That detail, she says, is what sets her juice apart from the one made in coffee shops, which use white sugar