Ask the two brothers behind Magolos what their restaurant reveals about Colombia, and Sebastián Yepes won't talk about recipes first—he'll talk about attention. Magolos, he says, exists so that people stop letting their everyday lives turn into wallpaper—the soup nobody notices anymore, the chicken stew that's always just been there. Working out of a small, unassuming spot in El Poblado, the brothers built their menu around that very food (sudado de pollo, frijoles, and the soup of the day)as a way of inviting Colombians and visitors alike to taste and take pride in what is already theirs.

Ocio, the culinary creation of chef Laura Londoño, opened in August 2013 on a quiet, tree-lined street in Provenza. A graduate of the Institut Paul Bocuse in Lyon, Londoño trained in the Michelin-starred kitchens of L'Astrance in Paris and Il Rigoletto in Reggio Emilia before exploring Sydney's modern Asian culinary scene. Architect Santiago Arango designed the warm, unpretentious space. More than a decade later, Ocio opened in a residential area of El Poblado. There, Laura renovated her grandmother's house and turned it into one of the most unique restaurant settings in Medellín. Ocio remains one of the restaurants credited with introducing slow, chef-driven cooking to Medellín. The menu changes every six months based on the season and what the Colombian Pacific provides.

Long before Urbania became one of the most recognizable coffee names in Medellín, Ricardo Restrepo was raised by a father with business instincts and a mother with a social conscience; two influences that would define everything he built. In 2015, he and his co-founders Julián Gamboa and Ricardo Mesa launched Urbania based on a simple premise: buy the best coffee directly from small growers, pay them above market price, and use that increased income to improve the lives of people in rural areas. Today, the B Corp-certified brand sources coffee from Huila, Tolima, Valle del Cauca, Antioquia, and Bolívar. Urbania helps fund the replacement of coca crops with coffee and the protection of biological corridors where jaguars and spectacled bears still roam.

Today, Urbania has multiple branches in Medellín and Bogotá. Our favorite is the coffee shop located inside the Museo de Antioquia. We highly recommend visiting the museum and stopping by their location there.

Chef Pablo Naranjo says he started dreaming about Zombra, his restaurant, when he was fourteen. After spending a decade cooking in India and Southeast Asia, Pablo returned to Medellín. With the help of his childhood friend and architect, Sebastián Trujillo, who designed the space, Pablo opened Zombra in El Poblado in January 2026. Pablo describes his cooking as "singular": a fusion of ingredients sourced directly from Medellín's plazas de mercado and farmers that are reworked with techniques and spice blends he learned abroad. One example is his Colombianized garam masala. Pablo still delivers many dishes to the table himself and talks through them in whichever language the guest prefers. For him, a restaurant only makes sense if its owner is actually present.

We strongly recommend going for the tasting menu. The philosophy behind it is "try everything we have," while ensuring your satisfaction. Through a system of hand signals, food constantly comes out of the kitchen until you feel full.

Alejandra Villa has been drawing since she was three. She studied at the Instituto de Bellas Artes and worked in another gallery to learn the business. Then, during Medellín's 2020 pandemic lockdown, when artists had nowhere to showcase their work, she launched El Coleccionista, a digital platform that allowed collectors to view the artists' pieces. The platform later became a physical gallery and is now located in Barrio Colombia, the city's industrial-turned-creative district near the Museo de Arte Moderno. Alejandra runs the gallery alone and has personally selected the work of more than 70 Colombian artists.

In 2011, sisters-in-law Manuela Rubio and Paola Betancur opened Makeno in El Poblado. The 60-square-meter store initially carried a handful of local labels. Over a decade later, Makeno has grown to roughly 400 square meters, stocking more than a hundred Colombian brands of clothing, accessories, home goods, books, and music, all of which are curated in-house. Makeno describes its team as people who "love and believe in the creative industry," and this is evident in how the store operates. It's less of a shop and more of a commitment to Colombian design, one collection at a time.

Verónica Franco was already an industrial designer who worked with recycled materials when she started Tigre de Salón. She built leather and textile pieces that were meant to last rather than follow trends. A few years in, a personal trip to the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta altered the course of the brand: in Nabusimake, the spiritual center of the Arhuaco people, Franco met the Villafañe family, led by Oliverio and Aty Seynekun, and requested to collaborate with them. Since then, weavers from that community and neighboring families have been making pieces alongside her using regenerative leather produced in Medellín, as well as cotton and hand-carved wood. Each bag or backpack incorporates their weaving into its design.