Inside Celele, Where Jaime Rodríguez Reimagines the Colombian Caribbean

On a balmy October evening in Cartagena, Colombia, the best meal of my life nearly slips through my fingers. I arrive at Celele ready for the tasting menu, only to realize I booked the wrong date. By some stroke of luck, one walk-in table remains. Within minutes, the first bites introduce me to a Colombia I had yet to experience — wild flavors, indigenous ingredients, and the vast, remarkable palette of the Caribbean.

Cartagena anchors Colombia’s northern coast, a region that holds nearly 10% of the world’s biodiversity. And yet, for decades, the city’s contemporary dining scene leaned either on familiar coastal staples — coconut rice, fried fish — or imported trends. For chef Jaime Rodríguez, this was a missed opportunity.

“I’d go to the Bazurto Market and see all these incredible ingredients, but none of the restaurants in Cartagena were using them,” he says. With so many wild ingredients in the territory, why weren’t any reaching the table? And so began Rodríguez’s commitment to change that.

For the next two and a half years, he traversed the Colombian Caribbean to meet with those who knew the region best. Visiting communities of small farmers, fishermen, and traditional cooks, he began mapping the area’s biodiversity and finding culinary inspiration in every corner — a forgotten seed, an aromatic flower, an edible leaf that howler monkeys favored during the rainy season.

This effort launched Project Caribe Lab, the research initiative Rodríguez founded years before opening his restaurant, dedicated to preserving native ingredients, rescuing ancestral knowledge, and strengthening rural communities that farm these ingredients. The project still anchors his work today, fueling the constant investigation that allows Celele to source nearly 90% of its ingredients from Colombia, most stemming from wild-harvested ecosystems.

By the fifth course, I understand his passion. The dish, a delicate mackerel lightly smoked in coconut husks, is half-buried beneath edible yellow flowers and glossy plum leaves. As I mix everything together, the broth turns silky and surprisingly creamy, brightened by a pop of lemon and a green, herb-flecked oil. The flavor, warm and savory, is unlike any ceviche I’ve ever tasted.

Our server, Marjorie, explains that the creaminess stems from the native orejero seed, ground into a rustic, tahini-like paste; the warmth is from a roux made with za’atar; and the depth from sesame seed. Together it forms a calducho, a simple, yet deeply layered broth. The orejero seed, native to Central and South America, is an example of how Rodríguez uses contemporary cooking to introduce diners to the breadth of Colombia’s biodiversity — familiar in a sense, yet built on ingredients seldom seen on restaurant menus.

Part of that familiarity stems from Colombia’s crossroads of cultures: Indigenous, African, Spanish, and even Arabic. The result is a cuisine shaped by overlap, woven throughout Celele’s menu. The featherlight journey cake nods to Rodríguez’s travels to the islands of San Andrés and Santa Catalina, where he first learned about the coconut breads Afro-Colombian women once baked for their husbands heading out to fish or plant crops. His naturally fermented version pulls apart with a cloud-like texture, ready to dip into a tangy vinegar infused with Colombia’s limón de oro.

For Rodríguez, the work always circles back to the territory — its people, its ingredients, its stories. “I’m proud of my work because so many people have told me how proud they are of it. They love how I work with the communities and represent Colombia on a global stage,” he shares. A fixture on Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants list for six consecutive years — most recently climbing to No. 5 — Celele also earned the No. 48 spot on the 2025 World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

As with every great storyteller, Rodríguez saves the most personal moment for last. On one of his investigative journeys, he noticed a cluster of ylang-ylang flowers sitting in a simple glass of water in a producer’s kitchen. She called it “the love flower,” explaining how she would spritz the perfumed water onto clothes and bed linens. The scent captivated him, and he instantly knew it needed to become a dessert.

“People who come from more rural areas, they come to the restaurant and try this dessert, and they tell me it reminds them of their childhood. Their mother would do the same thing,” says Rodríguez. “This is what Celele is all about.”

The resulting dish, a coconut sorbet infused with ylang-ylang and served inside a bright green grapefruit, comes crowned with edible flowers — a signature Rodríguez move — and is now his favorite on the menu. It’s a tribute not only to that memory, but to his mother, who taught him the pastry techniques that shaped his journey as a chef. At Celele, Rodríguez’s celebration of Colombia’s Caribbean coast gathers its cultures, landscapes, and flavors into a single, edible love letter. It’s one worth returning to again and again.