Bogota Blogger

Another restaurant in Zona G, where I live, that I have to call my favorite is on Calle 70 just above the Quinta. This is slightly up into the residential part of the neighborhood, on a block that’s off the beaten track just a bit. If I have to judge my favorite restaurants by which I patronize the most, this one really IS my favorite. It’s fun, funky, has good food, and most importantly is about 30 paces from the front door of my building–literally right around the corner. It’s called La Hamburgueseria.

Hamburgueseria is a hamburger joint, of course, but an upscale one. They have three other locations in Bogota that I know of–one is by the bullring, one is in Usaquen (lots of funky restaurants that have a few locations in town have one in Zona G and one in Usaquen), and they just recently opened on in Parque 93. That last maneuver actually caused them to drop a notch in my estimation, because Parque 93 is sort of the uber-trendy. I have a friend who is friends with the owners of the chain, and he says even they admit that opening a restaurant in Parque 93 is sort of selling out, because the other locations are all in neighborhoods that are actually more neighborhood-y and a have distinct personalities. But, I guess the opportunity to have a restaurant in a location that almost guarantees being packed from opening till closing every night was too much to resist. And, I guess the people who hang out in Parque 93 deserve to be exposed to a little bit of a funkier culture. After all, how much TGIFridays and El Coral Gourmet can you take?

 The Usaquen location, by the way, has live entertainment a few nights a week. My location, in Emaus (or Zona G), is just for food and hanging out.

So, the ambience is probaby the most important thing in Hamburgueseria. It’s dimly lit, has a lot of really whimsical murals and papier-mache statues as decor, but for the main decorations are authentic concert posters, many oversized ones, from the 1960’s, 70’s, and early 80’s. They got posters for Al Green, Velvet Underground, Led Zeppelin, and tons of others.

There’s also a second floor that takes up just half the space of the first, so there’s a loft-type effect that creates a really open feeling. The tables have painted wooden coverings atop table cloths, with geometric designs in red and yellow–each different. It’s a really casual place, with a big-screen TV over the bar and an outdoor patio for smokers to eat.

The menu features hamburgers, of course. I’ve been to this joint maybe 30 times in the 20 m0nths that I’ve lived in the neighborhood, and have ordered the same thing each and every time–a bacon cheeseburger and a malteada (milkshake). Sometimes I vary the flavor of the milkshake. But, I know they list about 10 varieties of hamburgers (Mexican, for example, with chili and cheese), and have turkey and vegetarian burgers, and also serve other sandwich-type dinners, like chicken and fish (they call these “afuera de hamburguesas”–”away from hamburgers”).

There’s always oldies music, a roaring fire (obligatory in Bogota year-round), and they bring about 8-10 types of sauces to your table to use on the burgers or whatever else you like to put sauce on. The waiters are fast and friendly, and the kitchen is separated from the dining room by just a bar, so you can see what’s happening back there if you like (a lot of restaurants in this zone have that feature).

Oh, one thing that’s not so great about this place–all of the appetizers I’ve tried (about 5 of the 8 or so listed) really suck. Must to avoid: the quesadillas, which are dry and taste a whole lot like cardboard.

But, just skip en appetizers, and everything else adds together to make this a fun place that you can go to often–it’s not time-consuming, it’s very informal, it’s fun, and the food is consistently good. 

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 11:06 am and is filed under Restaurants/Cafes/Bars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.