Oh! La La - Cartagena, Colombia

Variety
Quality

I'd been wanting to visit Oh! La La ever since it featured in an NYTimes article. I couldn't quite make it back in December due to lack of time. This time, I was determined to go there with Aparna in tow. It proved to be quite an adventure getting there. Oh! La La very recently moved to its trendy new location in the Old city - so much so that they did not even have a name plate. It took a few calls in my broken spanish before I eventually found it.

Since we were effectively the first guests for the evening, we were attended to very well. The owner, Carolina spoke English and gave us a tour of the menu which contained a fair smattering of vegetarian dishes. She was very open to preparing something not on the menu if we didn't find anything to our liking. That, wasn't necessary.

We started off with some delectable soups. Both the Carrot/Orange soup and Coconut Lentil soup were exquisite.

The mushroom parmesan penne pasta was cooked to my liking. It symbolized everything that I like about Italian food in Colombia - fresh ingredients, pasta cooked al dente and a restraint in terms of excess - read cheese, salt and butter.

The dessert was a disappointment. It was probably my fault. I should've picked the chocolate mousse.

Andre's

Veg Options
Taste

I'm clearly cheating here. Andre's is a no-holds-barred steakhouse - but it's also the most fun restaurant I've ever been to. There are enough vegetarian nibbles to satisfy the most voracious appetite. It features many vegetarian colombian finger foods like patacon pizza (pictured above) and arepas con huevo/choclo. All these dishes also come with incredibly tasty dipping sauces

I can't possibly talk about Andre's without mentioning the milkshakes. The guanabana and mango milkshakes are to die for. Also worth trying are tomate de arbol and guayaba (guava) juices. I'd go back to Andre's - which is a fair trek from Bogota proper - just for the milkshakes.