On September 1, Álvaro Clavijo will travel from Bogotá to Şile for a one-night dinner with Emre Şen at Casa Lavanda. Álvaro Clavijo arrives at a defining moment for El Chato, the restaurant he founded in 2017 and which became the first Colombian address to be named No.1 by Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2025. At Casa Lavanda, his reading of Colombia’s biodiversity will enter a kitchen whose identity begins in the soil surrounding it.
Álvaro Clavijo’s cuisine moves across Colombia, drawing ingredients and ideas from the Amazon, the Andes and the Caribbean through relationships built with farmers, fishermen and foragers. Emre Şen works from another landscape. More than 80 per cent of Casa Lavanda’s produce grows in its 2,000-square-metre biodynamic garden; the rest comes from the farmers, growers and gatherers of Şile. Their territories are distant, yet both chefs allow the season and the people behind each ingredient to determine what reaches the plate.
The menu will bring these two geographies together for a single evening. Colombian ingredients will meet the herbs, vegetables and local produce of Şile without asking either cuisine to leave its identity behind. For Álvaro Clavijo and Emre Şen, locality becomes a way of looking outward: from one garden to another, from one producer to the next, and from two landscapes towards a table they can share.
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