Chef Mario Rosero is standing beside a wood-fired grill at the back of Prudencia, the restaurant he owns in La Candelaria, Bogotá’s cobblestoned old town. The grill has three circular grates that can be adjusted to different positions. Small pieces of pork are sizzling on the one directly above the flames; a cast iron pot filled with corn is cooking less fiercely on another, higher up. Perfecting this clever, compact set-up is what Mario —a Culinary Institute of America graduate born in the Colombian city of Pasto and raised in Los Angeles —has been up to since the pandemic.
Rather than completely pivoting to takeaway, like so many restaurants, Mario and his staff started making and selling grills like these, plus home-made briquettes of binchotan, a slow-burning, smokeless charcoal. Since then, the restaurant menu has become a
