Down a gravel pathway in a rural Colombian town, just over 20 miles from the Caribbean coast, a group of African women donning billowy dresses offer up baskets filled with sweets: coconut-laden cocadas, chewy caballitos, and the ever-so-sweet popped millet balls known as alegría, from the Spanish word for “joy.” Cloaked in the saturated red, yellow, and blue of the Colombian flag, the women, known as palenqueras, make a living here peddling fresh fruits and homemade treats to locals and visitors alike. But it’s not just the palenqueras’ snacks that are sweet; the quiet roads of San Basilio de Palenque are paved with the sweetness of freedom.

Palenque, as its name is typically shortened, is the first free African village in the Americas, and descendants of African slaves exist here in a way that’s foreign to most other descendants of slaves, myself included: There is no police system here, and never has been. Instead, locals self-govern, and approach disputes using locally-trusted practices of forgiveness and conflict resolution. This atmosphere has enabled the community’s African heritage to flourish well beyond the legacy of Colombian enslavement. Elders retain ancient medicinal practices, young musicians revitalize erstwhile music traditions, and home cooks and chefs preserve their generations-old recipes and culinary techniques—all rooted in customs and practices brought over by their enslaved ancestors in the early 16th century. 

That heritage was immediately evident even before I arrived in Palenque, along with about 10 other Black American travelers. Roughly 4.7 million Colombians are of African descent, making up just under 10 percent of the country’s population. In Cartagena, 30 miles or so to the north, their influence is most recognizable in the street food: Arepas, the popular flatbreads frequently stuffed with meat and cheese, are made from a dough of ground and mashed maize, a common ingredient for Indigenous and Black Colombians. Among vendors doling out papas con huevo y carne (potato balls with eggs and meat) and potato- or meat-stuffed empanadas, the palenqueras, who sometimes commute north to make more money in Cartegena’s main squares, are easily visible in their vibrant colors, selling the same sweets I encountered in their storied hometown. 

In Palenque, though, that African influence extends far beyond the food: It’s an inextricable feature of the place itself. As you arrive in town, you are welcomed immediately by a striking statue of the freedom fighter Benkos Biohó, a Guinea Bissau–born revolutionary who escaped a Spanish slave port in Cartagena in the 16th century and led his people to freedom. Settling in the mountainous Montes de María region of the country, he organized a runaway slave network to help other enslaved Africans reach their liberation. He was ultimately captured and executed in 1621, but his efforts toward freedom weren’t entirely in vain: In 1713, after years of failing to take back the settlement, the Spaniards surrendered their attacks, and Palenque effectively became the first free African village, by decree of the King of Spain. Today, lionized through the brass statue, Biohó extends a single shackled arm, grasping for one more chance to bring another soul into a free world.

More than 300 years after its founding, food, art, and music have become some of Palenque’s most prominent features. Walking through the gravel roads, songs drift from open windows, while local bands perform in the streets throughout the day. Drum beats and the sounds of rhythmic steps merge with the music as it crescendos and reverberates across town. Brightly painted murals adorn storefronts and walls, many depicting Black women experiencing the ebbs and flows of life. 

As I swipe beads of sweat from my forehead, I see a mural showing a Black woman with words inscribed in her braids, an ode to a clever trick among enslaved African women who braided maps and instructions into their hair to provide key information and escape routes during the transatlantic slave trade. They would braid seeds into their hair as well, which enabled ingredients like tamarind, bitter melon, kola nut, and the subtly sweet melegueta pepper to become part of Colombia’s foodways. Elsewhere, a stoic Black woman’s eyes seem to meet the end of the short road, and a colorful “Black Lives Matter” sign points to Black people’s interconnected, global fight for liberation. 

I am soon encircled by a group of children, recruiting me into their game of tag as we approach “The House of Music.” Founded by local musical group Kombilesa Mi (which means “my friend,” in Palenquero, the Creole language here), the small museum is home to a collection of regionally specific instruments, like the Cuban-inspired marímbula and large drums called buleadors. The band members hope to transform the space to welcome even more visitors, and are actively raising money to reach their $12,000 goal. “Music is really the heart and soul of Palenque,” says Blue Apple Beach hotelier Portia Hart, “so having an institution like this readily available for the community and visitors is imperative.” 

Palenque’s music history includes a combination of traditions brought over and adapted by enslaved Africans from places including Nigeria and Central Africa. In 1927, Cuban influences reached the local music scene, which continued to evolve as more local musicians drew inspiration from other parts of the diaspora. As we walk to lunch, we are treated to some music from a local group that march near us down the road, dressed in some of the cleanest multicolored short sets in the area, their ebullient lyrics and colorful instruments rousing the entire neighborhood.

“Everything we do—how we learn how to use our environment, how we prepare the plants that grow nearby, the way we prepare fish, the way we prepare our medicine—it’s a result of our heritage from the African people,” says Víctor Simarra Reyes, a chef, educator, and an advocate for Palenque pride. 

Just a few blocks away from Biohó’s statue, at a friend’s home, Reyes has prepared an exquisite meal for us. Quiet and uninterested in small talk, Reyes focuses on getting the food to our table, which is covered in bright, pear-green banana leaves. Within just a few minutes, there are generous helpings of meat, rice, stews, and sauces. Reyes throws his towel over his shoulder, and gestures with his hands in urgency. 

“Eat,” he says. And so we do. I take handfuls of hen and cassava in a lightly sweet coconut sauce, served with a thick red bean pottage. We all take increasingly bigger bites of his bollo de plátano con cerdo asado, a traditional plantain bun cooked with roasted pork; and his cabeza de gato, a smashed green plantain snack he’d decided that day to combine with a kind of fresh cheese. We enjoy our share of sweets during a magnificent dessert spread: alegría, like the palenqueras served, sweet and fragrant with coconut, and enyucado, a cassava cake enlivened with star anise. 

It’s a marvelous feast that clearly has required hours of cooking. Reyes explains that he chose to share these dishes not in spite of their difficulty, but because of it. “We wanted to show that this cooking is not simple,” Reyes says. “It requires a lot of time, and a lot of effort.” This education is part of a larger movement that Reyes has long championed—working with Palenque cooks and chefs to preserve and create from their local foodways, rather than have their food expressed by non-Black chefs and writers. He has become a voice for sharing what he describes as Palenque’s “rustic” dining with the world, and fully and proudly communicates the integral role African roots play in their food.

Reyes’ work is documented in the cookbook Kumina ri Palenge pa tó Paraje, or “Palenquero Cooking for the World,” in English: a community collaboration he spearheaded to document recipes spanning more than 300 years of the town’s history. He and his wife, Ruth Reyes, consulted more than 600 local home cooks, collecting recipes and selecting an elite group of recipe writers and testers. “We were the first ones to go through the recipes, collect them, and put them on paper so we don’t let these traditions die,” Reyes says. Together, they produced the first cookbook documenting Palenque’s cuisine, which went on to receive the “Best Cookbook in the World” award at the 2014 Gourmand World Cookbook awards in Beijing. 

Before Reyes was a chef, he was a young African Colombian boy, helping his grandmother with her sancocho trifásico, a three-meat soup that typically took a full day to prepare. Often served with cassava and rice, both of which Reyes says are mainstays of the local diet, the soup is a peppery, aromatic, and deeply soothing dish that has persisted in home kitchens. He recalls the once-ubiquitous (and labor-intensive) bollo de maíz, a fried, roasted corn snack, which he laments had disappeared from many Palenque homes by the time he was a young man.

I get the chance to experience some of this labor with Antonia Cassiani, a Palenque native and local tour guide who goes by the name “Samba.” Gripping a massive pestle along with another partner, we rhythmically beat the corn as our group sings songs to encourage us. The process is reminiscent of an enduring practice in which women pile rice, grains, or corn into a massive wooden mortar and use their physical strength to do what locals call, “pillaring the corn.” That is, grinding the ingredients while singing songs that illustrate their dreams, concerns, and everyday thoughts. “This kitchen instrument was the creative engine of many women who poured their ideas into it, and sang their sorrows to it,” says Reyes. “It’s another example of just how important Black women are to our community, and to our food.”

When Reyes first started cooking, he picked up history and recipes orally; it wasn’t until later in his life that he learned to read and write so he could record and share his knowledge. When he graduated from elementary school at the age of 50, he immediately put his new skills to use: As part of his graduation requirements, which encouraged students to do something impactful for the community, he authored the cookbook. The goal for most, it seems, in Palenque, is not to climb and climb and climb chasing trivial achievements, but rather to salvage, to save, and to secure. 

“I take pride in my role as the representative of our traditions and our cuisine,” says Reyes. “After all these years of working, that’s what I cherish most.” 

Palenque hasn’t always been so comfortable with sharing its culture: The legacy of colonization has made many in the community understandably resistant to outside influence. Even Ruth, Reyes’ wife, was considered suspicious when she first moved to Palenque from the similar small Colombian town of San Antonio. An outsider, then, was always an outsider. But Reyes and his peers are learning to embrace opening their doors to other descendants of the African diaspora. 

“I’m very joyful that the community of Palenque is very open,” Reyes says of the shift. “My heart warms every time I see 80 buses full of tourists. Palenqueros are welcoming them and are showing their traditions, their cuisine, and their culture. They’re taking pride in it and showing it to the world.”

Reyes and his peers recognize a solidarity among curious Black travelers who come to Palenque. It might be for the food, the music, or simply the evidence that we all have a shared home, a shared origin story. The canvases on which we were forced to design a life reveal a com – mon search for freedom—perhaps most evidenced in our ability to survive and thrive in different parts of the world. 

Prior to my departure, I visit Biohó’s statue once again, his face charged and yearning to be free. My own family, like many others, were enslaved on American coasts in the Deep South, and though Emancipation supposedly gave us freedom, it would be another century before my people gained equal rights in the United States. The quest for Black liberation can be devastating. Our culture, heritage, and contributions are still often misrepresented or under – appreciated. We lose our heroes to state-sanctioned violence, are lectured about our behavior, and are chastised for demanding a society where equity and decency are primary values.

“There’s a phrase that resonates here,” Pedro Mosqueda, a chef and student of Reyes, tells me. “I’m happy, and it is not because of the music, but because of the leader who gave me my freedom.” As I gaze upon the town, filled with Afro-Colombians dancing, playing soccer, and lounging out under the dazzling sunset, I remember that freedom is so often something we find within ourselves.

Recipes

Colombian Stewed Chicken with Achiote and Yam

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Creole Coconut Chicken

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The post Colombia and West Africa Unite on the Plate in This Fascinating Food Town appeared first on Saveur.

When you arrive in New Orleans, the smell of fresh water from the Mississippi River intermingles with aromas of paprika, oregano, and deep-frying beignets. Here, all of your senses remind you you’re in a distinctive part of the American South. There are great food cities in America—and then there’s New Orleans.

The Big Easy draws over 18 million visitors per year, as eager to drink merrily down Bourbon Street as they are to gobble up po’boys, crawfish pies, and bowls of gumbo.

I’ve been going to New Orleans since I was a kid. My parents, natives of Baton Rouge, would take us into the “Big City” for family events. We’d drive down streets with French names filled with second line parades and outdoor funeral marches, all of which were pretty unusual for a seven-year-old from Houston. It would be years until I could fully appreciate the city’s pulsing and dynamic culture, but as far back as I can remember, I’ve always adored its food.

New Orleans’ world-renowned cuisine is an amalgamation of flavors and spices from places as diverse as West Africa, Western Europe, and the Caribbean. When enslaved West Africans were forcibly migrated to the city’s port beginning in the 18th century, they brought with them the ingredients, skills, and techniques that would forever shape the city’s foodways. Today, immigrants from Southeast Asia and Latin America are pushing the city’s dining forward, and restaurants like Lengua Madre and Tân Định embody New Orleans’ reverence for novelty and heritage in equal measure. Businesses here have survived devastating hurricanes and complex city politics—all to keep locals and travelers satiated with generous bowls of shrimp Creole, crawfish étouffée, and far more dishes that simply can’t be captured in one list, much less one trip. But grab a table at these standbys, and you’ll be off to a running start.

Central Grocery and Deli

923 Decatur St.
504-523-1620

When 113-mile-per-hour winds hurled a 10-foot brick wall into the roof of Central Grocery and Deli during Hurricane Ida, the future of this French Quarter Italian cornerstone was put in jeopardy. Though the grocery has been shuttered since that fateful week in 2021 (yet hopefully not for much longer), you can still grab their primordial muffuletta sandwiches nearby at Sidney’s Wine Cellar, where the colossal sandwiches—layering antipasti, olives, cheese, and Italian cold cuts—are sold for $30 (a half goes for $15). Owner Lupo Salvatore created the sandwich in 1906 before refrigerators were commonplace, which means it can be refrigerated or kept at room temperature, making the sandwich a perfect edible souvenir.

Dakar NOLA

3814 Magazine St.
504-493-9396

Despite the resounding influence West Africans imparted on New Orleans cuisine, few from the current diaspora have made as much of a splash as Seringe Mbaye. The young Senegalese chef weaves his heritage into dishes like soupou kanja (a gumbo thickened with okra roux brimming with seafood, Louisiana rice, and palm oil) and Akara black-eyed-pea fritters (filled with Gulf shrimp and topped with kaluga caviar). Dakar NOLA shows off the range of West African and Creole cooking, and encourages visitors to rethink any white-male-centric notions they may have of fine dining. 

Dooky Chase Restaurant

2301 Orleans Ave
504-821-0600

When Dooky Chase opened in 1941, its founder Leah Chase revolutionized the perception of Creole and African American cooking in the United States through dishes like red beans and rice and shrimp Creole. Her elegant Tremé restaurant was a centerpiece of the Civil Rights Movement and played host to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he needed a safe place to organize with fellow activists. Chase would go on to feed generations of the city’s African American community, several U.S. presidents, and a steady community of travelers. Today, the restaurant’s walls are emblazoned with vivid artwork from local African American artists, articles celebrating the restaurant history, and other fascinating memorabilia including a gift from Disney proclaiming the inspiration Chase provided for Disney’s first Black princess. It’s the food, however, that continues to draw an endless stream of tourists eager to try shrimp Clemenceau (an old-school Creole staple of potatoes, peas, shrimp, and aromatics), Creole gumbo, and red beans and rice—just a few dishes perfected over a lifetime.

Sneaky Pickle & Bar Brine

3200 Burgundy St.
504-218-5651

Plant-based food can be hard to come by in a city often defined by its po’boys and gumbo—but not at Sneaky Pickle & Bar Brine. Here, you’ll find dishes like grilled okra sprinkled with sesame seeds and spooned over creamy cashew sauce, and maccherone bathed in cashew-butternut cheese and tossed with cucumber, zucchini, and vegan chorizo. This scruffy watering hole boasts an uber-friendly waitstaff, and a pretty-in-pink bar where you can sip impressive cocktails while listening to a thoughtful playlist featuring everything from the wistful lyrics of The Police to the rhythmic beats of Outkast. If you happen to be in town on a Monday, take advantage of the “Orange You Glad It’s Monday” special that’s all about orange-hued cocktails and wines. 

Vaucresson’s Creole Cafe & Deli

1800 St. Bernard Ave.
855-727-3653

New Orleans native Vance Vaucresson learned to make sausage from his father, Sonny, who (with his family) ran one of the nation’s first Black-owned sausage plants. Hurricane Katrina decimated the original business, but Vance’s recent outpost is an extension of his family’s history. The deli sells sausage links of many varieties, like Creole hot, jerk chicken, and Creole crawfish, but unless you’re traveling with a cooler, the move at this family-run shop and deli is to order a sausage roll, shrimp and fry basket, or sausage plate accompanied by flavorful sauces like mango mustard and Creole green onion.

NOLA Poboys

908 Bourbon St.
504-522-2639

NOLA Poboys is open until 1 a.m., ensuring you can end a night of revelry on a full stomach. Po’boy options include the classic fried shrimp and oysters as well as other, more adventurous, hoagies like one filled with crispy fried alligator chunks. Heat lovers, this is your moment: These po’boys are well-seasoned and spicy—unless you go “Yankee” (mild). Dig into other city favorites here, too, like crawfish pies and boudin balls, which you can savor in a booth or on a walk down Bourbon Street.

Plume Algiers

1113 Teche St.
504-381-4893

Tyler Stuart and Merritt Coscia have transformed their home into a celebration of the couple’s southern Louisiana roots and love of Indian cuisine. The menu hinges on weekly market finds, but dishes like Chingri Malai shrimp—simmered with turmeric, coconut milk, and toasted red chiles—and raj kachori, a featherlight fried puff filled with pomegranate seeds, aloo bhujia, and cilantro, rarely come off the menu for a reason.

Compère Lapin

535 Tchoupitoulas St.
504-599-2119

Nina Compton likely needs no introduction. The Top Chef favorite and James Beard Award-winning chef flaunts her St. Lucian roots at this gorgeous restaurant housed in the Old No. 77 Hotel & Chandlery. The sweet potato gnocchi with curried goat and cashews illustrate Compton’s knowledge of Creole, Cajun, and Caribbean flavors, as do fan-favorite cocktails. Two to consider: the Page of Swords (gin, Salers, dry vermouth, orange blossom, and curaçao) and the tropical Holy Trinidaiq (rum, coconut, Angostura, and lime).

Liuzza’s by the Track

1518 N. Lopez St.
504-218-7888

When I visited this snug bar and restaurant with New York Times food writer Brett Anderson, he waxed poetic about the decadent po’boys. But for me, it’s the gumbo that consistently stands above. The family-owned restaurant sautées the shrimp just before it’s served, and despite my aversion to okra in gumbo (a point of contention among many of us Southerners), Luizza’s makes a compelling case for its inclusion.

Commander’s Palace

1403 Washington Ave.
504-899-8221

A perennial party complete with live bands and a joyous staff lures the crowds to Commander’s Palace, but it’s the attention to detail that has made the restaurant a favorite among locals and visitors alike since 1893. Don’t let the idea of turtle soup scare you—it’s a longtime New Orleans tradition, and is enlivened here with chopped egg, lemon juice, and a dash of sherry. Creole bread pudding, finished tableside with warm whiskey cream, is a comforting way to wrap up an inevitably rich and indulgent meal. Don’t forget to wear your best; shorts aren’t allowed.

Mosquito Supper Club

3824 Dryades St.
504-517-0374

Melissa Martin grew up in Cajun country and celebrates that culinary heritage at Mosquito Supper Club. At her Uptown restaurant, guests dine communally on the bounty of Louisiana waters through dazzling plates of Cajun seafood. While removing crawfish heads or digging for every last bit of meat in her stuffed crabs—all in a room illuminated with strings of lights and filled with the laughter of joyful patrons—you’ll likely meet new friends from places as near as the Audubon neighborhood and as far as halfway around the world. The experience is pricey, and worth a flight across an ocean for a reason: Martin works with local seafood purveyors; uses fresh, quality ingredients; and constructs dishes that rival those at even the city’s oldest and most respected restaurants.

Bacchanal Wine & Cheese

600 Poland Ave.
504-948-9111

The self-proclaimed “backyard party” of New Orleans is a terrific spot to stock up on wine and cheese, but I like sticking around to nibble a made-to-order charcuterie board on the beautiful patio (often to the backdrop of live music). If cheese isn’t your jam, bacon-wrapped dates and gambas served with crostini are just as excellent. Don’t rush the experience here—at Bacchanal, the bons temps are truly meant to rouler.

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