Review: Club Colombia serves authentic Colombian in Melbourne CBD

Colombian cuisine is stacked with hearty food, from a protein-packed version of the big breakfast to a fried ‘sandwich’ cheese lovers will drool over. Here’s a Melbourne cafe that will deliver your fix.

Say cheese: The chocolo arepa topped with melted mozzarella.

My knowledge of Colombia, like many Melburnians I’d hazard, extends little further than having read 100 Years of Solitude, watchedNarcos on Netflix and marvelled at Sofia Vergara’s va-va-voom.

But what I can now add to that embarrassingly threadbare list, after a couple of meals at Club Colombia in the city, is that Colombians like cheese. Really, really like cheese.

You’ll find mozzarella filling a fat arepa — a fried ‘sandwich’ made from maize — and grated and grilled atop a sweet corn version of the same.

It’s the ballast in a creamy sauce surrounding slow-cooked steak and the improbable bedfellow of whipped cream and caramel between two wafer cookies. It’s baked with plantains and dunked in hot chocolate and it’s quite clear, looking around this brightly coloured restaurant where tables are filled with some of the 5000-odd expats who now call Melbourne home, that Colombians are mad for mozzarella.

The bright, colourful dining room of Club Colombia. Pictures: Nicki Connolly

While Peruvian teetered on the edge of being a full-blown food trend a few years back (now admirably championed by Pastuso and Harley House in the city), as far as Latin American cuisines go Colombian eateries are rather more thin on the ground, than say, Argentinian or, of course, Mexican.

But Diego Reyes wants to change that. He opened a small cafe, Cento Mani, in the city five years ago and added Club Colombia on Queen Street to the mix earlier this year with the aim of spreading the gospel of maize, meats, beans and rice to Melbourne.

It’s a cuisine of hefty, hearty food made for long days of tilling and toiling so sedentary city workers lunching on the bandeja paisa should factor in a little siesta al desko, for these are meals made for weathered brows and calloused hands, not Outlook alerts.

Meaning workmans’ platter, Colombia’s national dish is a plate piled with rib-sticking sustenance.

A bit like a gym bunny’s been let loose on the buffet, there’s white rice and thick creamy red beans, mildly spiced minced beef, a full chorizo sausage and fatty fried pork belly that’s crunchy and crisp. There’s an arepa and fresh avocado and cooked plantain, the lot topped with a fried egg.

Worker’s compensation: The hearty, hefty bandeja paisa.

It’s a monster mash that’ll put hair on your chest, the carnivorous, calorific antihero saving Melbourne’s diners from tweezers and flowers one sweet and sticky, good-and-bad fats meat-sweaty dish at a time.

Much like Vegemite, its charms are perhaps more apparent to those raised/indoctrinated from a young age, but for a plate to see you through to tomorrow, it’s a $25 meal deal hard to beat.

Calentado valluno is another huge plate, this time a take on a popular breakfast dish of rice reheated from the night before topped with a fried egg. Here, it’s a mound of sauteed rice and lentils flavoured with a tomato-y onion sauce called hogao and generously strewn with chorizo slices and pulled chicken.

Alongside, plantain in chip and sticky stewed form, which adds the sweet Colombians seem to crave with their meat ($22).

A Creole salsa of capsicum, tomato and onion adds a pizza vibe to the creamy, cheesy sauce that covers flank steak slow cooked tender. Not much to look at, it’s surprisingly moreish, a side of crunchy cassava adding thick fluffy fried carbs to the plate ($25).

Morcilla that’s mainly rice and peas has a mild iron richness, the grilled sausage served with sour creamed steamed potatoes, a couple of plain arepas and fresh lime to spritz over the lot. It’s a meal in itself ($12), but for an easy cheesy win look no further than the stuffed arepa, the white corn dough fried crisp and filled with stringy mozzarella. It’s bloody delicious ($10), especially when teamed with a hot chilli salsa to the side, though the sweet corn version, topped with melted mozz, is equally happy making ($10).

Milk made: The strangely alluring oblea.

And what about cheese for dessert?

Obleas are a popular street snack sandwich of wafer biscuits sandwiching grated mozzarella and arequipe, a Colombian caramel sauce like the dulche de leche of Argentina.

Here the large discs are joined by swirls of berry sauce and whipped cream. With the cheese adding bounce to the crunchy sandwich, it’s an oddly appealing combo of fruity and milky sweetness ($8).

The arroz con leche — rice milk pudding — hiding a big spoonful of caramel under its coconutty creaminess, offers more familiar comforts ($7).

15 BEST NEW RESTAURANTS IN VICTORIA

BEST RESTAURANTS OUTSIDE MELBOURNE’S CBD

MELBOURNE RESTAURANT NAMED AUSTRALIA’S BEST

In a room of vibrant yellows, reds and blues, the air filled with spoken Spanish and folk guitar, a fridge filled with namesake Club Colombia lager ($12) Coronas ($9) and a couple of generic local wines ($10 a glass) and staff eager to share the food and stories of their heritage, this is a unique slice of Colombian life in the heart of the city.

Join the club and say cheese.

CLUB COLOMBIA

Address: 118 Queen St, Melbourne; clubcolombia.com.au

Open: Mon-Tues lunch; Wed-Fri Lunch-dinner; Sat breakfast-dinner; Sun breakfast-lunch

Go-to dish: Bandeja paisa (workman’s platter)

SCORE: 13/20