“Bogotá tastes like pots and pans,” says chef Carlos Gaviria, on the city’s first culinary book.

After it was announced that the Fine Dining Table platform will be arriving in Latin America for the first time, with Bogotá as its epicenter, the District Tourism Institute (IDT) announced the launch of 'The Secret Book of the Flavors of Bogotá' , a publication that will compile the best of the city's gastronomy, its most representative native ingredients, traditional preparations, and stories from each neighborhood.

“With the Secret Book of the Flavors of Bogotá, we want to show that our cuisine not only nourishes, but also narrates, connects, and transforms our city in terms of tourism and the economy. This book is a commitment to the memory, the territory, and the culinary soul of Bogotá. At the Tourism Office, we believe that understanding the flavors of Bogotá means understanding its diversity, its people, and its identity. This is another step toward establishing ourselves as a world-class gastronomic destination,” says Andrés Santamaría, director of the IDT.

Through a tour of soups, root vegetables, arepas, fruits, high-altitude drinks, and traditional sweets , the publication seeks to position the city as a high-end culinary destination. The goal is for travelers to explore and learn more about the distinctive flavors of traditional Bogotá cuisine.

More than a cookbook, it will be a gastronomic inventory, connecting the kitchen with the city, its chefs, markets, and memories. " One doesn't position gastronomy solely through restaurants, but also through its ingredients, its dishes ," Santamaría explains to this outlet. She adds that the best way to achieve this is through research and stories.

To create the book, the IDT partnered with Carlos Gaviria, a chef and researcher renowned for his work on Colombian cuisine. “I'm a food writer, a researcher of our Colombian cuisine. This book goes hand in hand with a phrase I repeat often: there is no innovation without tradition,” he asserts.

According to Gaviria, the publication explores traditional cuisine and concludes with the local products , innovation, and global perspective that characterizes Bogotá today: a city that has welcomed not only other regions of the country, but also a diversity of cuisines that have found a home here.

"I think Bogotá is a city that tastes like pots and pans, like soups. If we visit the kitchens in our market squares, in popular places, we'll see a stove full of pots ," the chef concludes.

ANGIE RODRÍGUEZ - LIFE TODAY EDITORIAL