Restaurante Bar El Portal — Restaurant in Guatapé

I would confidently rank this as one of the top restaurants in Guatapé. While there are other options available, they don't quite compare.

As a Colombian, I recently visited the region with my husband for the first time, and we spent a few days in town, making this our go-to restaurant.

Although many restaurants in the area are Americanized and offer a mix of cuisines—ranging from Indian to Italian, including Colombian—this often raises a red flag.

What my husband and I have learned from our travels, having dined at both humble eateries and Michelin-starred establishments, is that an extensive menu with 85 options doesn't guarantee quality. Being Colombian, I can better assess traditional food, and Restaurante Bar El Portal truly impressed us. We also tried several local restaurants, including one at our hotel, but they fell short of what defines good Colombian cuisine.

Their menu is straightforward, featuring traditional regional dishes where you can truly taste the authenticity in every bite.

The food is well-seasoned, balanced, beautifully presented—simply amazing. It quickly became our favorite after our first visit.

The pricing is reasonable, positioned in the mid-to-high range for local currency, but incredibly accessible for those coming from the U.S.

Must-try dishes include Bandeja Paisa, a local and traditional meal that comes with beans, rice, plantain, salad, avocado, chicharrón, and ground beef. It’s the best Bandeja Paisa I’ve ever had, although I might be missing a few components—it's simply delicious.

My husband enjoyed the tomahawk steak, which was well-seasoned, tender, juicy, and cooked to perfection, served alongside salad and potatoes with mayonnaise.

We also try other dishes delicious all! Steaks fresh and grilled . Pork plate with passion fruit juicy and tender and soup of crema de champiñones.

For drinks, they offer local beers like La Cordillera and Águila, which my husband particularly enjoys. While they have other beer options, we prefer to stick with local varieties.

As for soft drinks, I loved the lemonade, though the coconut lemonade wasn't to my taste, it was still decent.

If you're in Guatapé and seeking high-quality, traditional food, this place is certainly a must-try. You won’t find anything quite like it...

So disappointed with this place. Really thought it was going to be good food based on high reviews. Maybe I’m just an overly picky Colombian/American, but the bandeja paisa was just awful. Don’t eat it, don’t do it. The only good thing in it was the fried egg, the mini arepa and the maduro everything else tasted really bad and I couldn’t eat it. I ordered the fried trout for my son and apparently it’s farm raised, they don’t have any fresh fish everything is farm raised so if you want fresh fish don’t go to this place. The fried trout looked weird and tasted even weirder. My husband got the grilled chicken, which was pretty good. Regardless, I would not recommend going to this place and would never go there again. Raised it to 2 stars from 1 because of grilled chicken everything else...

I had the Paisa Bandolo (or something like that), a traditional dish with a beer. Total was 53,000 COP with the tip. It was a full plate of food; beans, rice, salad, sausage, spiced chopped hamburger meat, avocado, sweet plantain, and pork belly. Since it's a traditional dish it's probably traditional to have excess fat on the pork and sausage. I was hungry, but I note that might bother some people. Ambiance is nice and I enjoyed the meal. I saw some restaurants (not on google maps) advertising plate of the days for 18,000 if you're looking for cheaper options but you won't have a choice of your drink or will pay for the extras. This restaurant is competitive with others given similar...