When you’re on vacation in a new city, with so many places you simply must go and nowhere you actually have to be, make the day about lunch. Specifically, a long, aimless lunch in a beautiful room, the kind of meal that makes you feel at home in a place you’ve never been. Because more than squeezing in one more museum, this is the magic of traveling and leaving real life behind. And it’s what Prudencia, in the Colombian capital, is all about.
Tucked in the shadow of misty Monserrate, amid the stone streets of La Candelaria, Bogotá’s oldest neighborhood, the restaurant feels like a secret. Nothing about the graffitied façade or unmarked door hints at the wonderland inside, where a glass atrium opens the dining room up to the sunny sky and nobody has anywhere else to be.
Time, seemingly endless amounts of it, is the luxury Prudencia trades in. A midday meal here can easily stretch to four hours and have the unhurried quality of being hosted by fabulous friends in their home. In this case, those fabulous friends are husband-and-wife owners Mario Rosero and Meghan Flanigan, who designed every detail to strike a balance of comfort and wonder.
The menu is set, so the only question is: What would you like to drink? Maybe a pairing of wines from Spain and California (where Rosero spent time growing up) or a journey of teas and house-made tonics? Every meal starts with country bread fresh from the wood oven. Almost everything here is cooked over fire, what Rosero calls “the most honest vehicle of cooking.” Flanigan describes her husband as “voracious, peripatetic,” with a cooking style rooted in Colombian ingredients yet driven by his ranging curiosities. Dishes wander the world, like a starter of beet kimchi alongside charred eggplant, followed by pork burnt ends caramelized in chocolate.
Midway through the meal, a scene change. Guests are ushered outside, maybe with an intermezzo cocktail in hand—mezcal with Kalamata olive, anyone?—to a second table in the leafy back garden. Here the grill is in full swing and somebody’s kids are enjoying the playhouse. This plein air interlude allows for a better look at the grill itself, a three-tiered rig of Rosero’s own design, and a chance to chat with the grill chef as he flips chicken that will soon arrive smoky and supple with an every-kind-of-green pistou. Eventually the party will move back inside, where the meal crescendos to a hearty main, like an earthy ragù of lamb cooked in rosé. Then salad. And since you’re really taking your time, not one but two desserts, just indulgent enough: sweet potato cheesecake or shiitake ice cream, perhaps. No one is coming to turn the table or drop a check. All that’s left to do is savor the last bite of chocolate bark, sip a second cup of Malawi tea, and marvel at the fact that the past several hours have given you more of a welcome to the city than any guided tour could.
This wasn’t always the scene at Prudencia. Before the pandemic it catered to a fast-paced power lunch crowd. When it came time to reopen in October 2020, Rosero and Flanigan decided that quality of life had to come first. So they went against all conventional wisdom, raising prices, doubling salaries, and slashing capacity to a dozen or so tables. The experiment worked. As restaurants all over Bogotá struggled to retain staff and customers, Prudencia’s employees remained loyal and the seats stayed filled. The generous style of service reflects this emphasis on well-being; it feels like the staff wants to be there as much as you do.
In this reinvention, Rosero and Flanigan have built an ecosystem in which those who make food and those who enjoy it can come together for a memorable few hours that will linger in your mind long after you return home. “The life philosophy has to be clear, and the business and food comes from that,” says Flanigan. “That’s what gives the restaurant spirit.”
