The Breakfast of Champions (Who Are Hungover and Need to Nap)

Julia Bainbridge
·Food Editor
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Photo credit: Julia Bainbridge

Sometimes, it pays to listen to your cabbie, and not just about the fastest route home.

In Miami with Yahoo Travel editor Paula Froelich last weekend, we got tips from her driver-turned-friend Mauricio. Not only did he clue Paula in to a top-notch tapas joint masked by a BP gas station, he also shared the best Colombian joint in Little Haiti (yes, a little confusing, but…): San Pocho. So, to San Pocho we went, the morning after a long night of Miami-style carousing.

There, we recovered with Colombia’s national dish, bandeja Paisa. It’s named for “Paisas,” the people from the Andean region of the country where the dish was born. A quick chat with our server at San Pocho taught us that bandeja Paisa comes in many varieties but usually consists of red beans cooked with pork, white rice, a fried egg, some kind of meat, whether ground or grilled whole, a chicharrón (fried pork skin), fried sweet plantains, and an arepa. It requires two platters to get it from grill to table, and it tastes like salt, meat, fat, corn, and hearty. (If you didn’t think “hearty” could be a flavor, try this.) 

Bandeja Paisa also usually includes avocado—you need something green on the plate—but ours did not. So we ordered the iceberg salad you see in the picture above to make ourselves feel better.

All of that cost $10.95. We went (back) to sleep fat and happy.