It’s with grand pleasure that we announce a new partnership with the – perhaps – most interesting new restaurant in Latin America, created by the curly cool Argentinean Nicolás López alongside the ginger afro Mexican Sergio Meza.
We bring you Villanos en Bermudas; or villains – the bad guys – in shorts, straight out of Bogotá, Colombia.
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It can be a challenge to describe the two young and talented chefs spearheading the massively popular restaurant Villanos en Bermudas located in Bogotá.
With combined experience from restaurants all over the world they bring raw talent, an eye for design and detail, and charismatic personalities accented by perfectly groomed afros.
Nicolás ‘Nico’ López, 34, and Sergio Meza, 27, have certainly shaken things up on the Latin Americans culinary map lately. So much so that their ambiguously named restaurant landed a first entry 40th spot on the Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurant List less than a year after opening its doors.
So let’s try…
Heart; courage, creativity, vision and the grandes cojones of two respectful yet very unimpressed future chef jefes, is what Villanos en Bermudas is all about. The restaurant’s name,- in English “villains in shorts” says it all.
Light-spirited but straight to the point with very curly minds, creating their own imaginary vision of how your culinary beauty moment should be like in real life, and doing so in a quirky yet very impressive three-story side alley colonial-style town house in the heart of Bogotá.
For these guys it hasn’t been so much the destination as much as the journey here. Both of them have amassed great international experience from working in diverse kitchens, everywhere from Copenhagen over Hong Kong to Mexico.
It was in Santiago, Chile however, that Argentinian Nico and Mexican Sergio would meet for the first time in 2012. At the time Sergio was working as Head Chef for I+D in the city and Nico had just came back from a job in New York City. A mutual friend of them, whom Sergio met when working at Noma introduced them, and the rest is – by far – history.
The story had just begun as it would be almost 4 years before the two curly chefs would meet up again. After their introduction, Nico moved to Chile where he opened a restaurant called “99”. Around the same time, Sergio worked in Hong Kong for a while before moving back to Guadalajara in Mexico.
It was here that Sergio received a phone call from Nico that would reunite them again after three and a half years and result in the creation of Villanos en Bermudas; a fun-loving restaurant that takes the stiffness out of what people consider fine dining, with a no-menu policy, a playful cuisine, colourful cartoon marketing and a cleverly crafted moniker that proves these guys don’t to take themselves too seriously.
Superstar Chef Rodolfo Guzmán of Boragó at Villanos en Bermudas.
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The restaurant is spread out over three floors, whereas the first floor serves as the main dining room with an open style kitchen. Second floor is the cool bar area, where they offer an array of custom made cocktails and spirits infused with fruits and herbs on site. The third floor is a more intimate dining area with only 16 seats, giving it more of a chefs’ table feel that houses another open kitchen with sight lines between the diners and the cooking talent.
The bubbling creativity not only shows in the creative cooking, where pineapple easily can be served as a savoury course and cauliflower transformed into a dessert, but also in the aesthetics of the interior.
Unlike many of their peers, the walls at Villanos en Bermudas aren’t filled with expensive artwork, nor are their ceilings adorned with unique chandeliers.
Read also: Villanos en Bermudas’ 50 Best Talk Latin America.
Pastry Princess Alejandra Hurtado at Villanos en Bermudas.
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Stepping into the restaurant you are greeted by disco balls and custom-made graphic posters. Interpretations of pop culture references from The Simpsons, Super Mario and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are but a few of the posters decorating the walls serving two different purposes.
“It’s about being entertaining while not being over the top, but definitely showing off our personalities. We encourage people to have fun while they are here”, Sergio explains and continues;
“We don’t want people to feel like they have to sit and be quiet during all the nine courses, so this is a free haven where you can be noisy and have fun. We have our own graphic designer in house who does all of our promotion including the posters, menus, flyers and such. We feed him the ideas and he brings them to life,”
– adding that the posters are also used for promotion for events when they have guest chefs across continents flying in.
Guadalajara’s Francisco ‘Paco’ Ruano at Villanos en Bermudas.
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Twelve foremost chefs of the Americas have already guest cooked in the buzzing town house in the Chapinero-quarter of Bogotá, such as Rodolfo Guzmán of famed Boragó in Santiago, Noma co-founder Mads Refslund in New York City, Mexican flavour prodigy Francisco ‘Paco’ Ruano of Alcalde in Guadalajara.
Yes, even 2017 Latin America’s Best Female Chef Leonor Espinosa of Leo located in same city Bogotá has been by the two villains’ kitchen to cook.
With all action standing still has not been a problem for these creative thinkers so far. They categorise their everyday changing tasting menu – a very unusual offer in the otherwise classic dining conservative Bogotá – as a simple setup with nine courses where seven are savoury and the last two are desserts.
On the menu there is always one main course but they try to steer away from using animal protein as much as possible, to introduce more fish to Bogotá.
The reason being that Colombia has two different oceans, the Caribbean and South Pacific, but still the native rarely eat fish as it isn’t considered high standards. The villains disagree and get their fish freshly delivered daily.
The mission is to show locals that ingredients from small producers you don’t normally use can be used in incredible ways. They also incorporate ingredients otherwise thought of as poor mans food, like beans and lentils.
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PERSONAL NOTE
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Three months ago I spend a week at and around Villanos en Bermudas during Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurant Awards, dined there twice, attended a rooftop BBQ and popped by the buzzing bar for drinks a couple of times too.
The daily changing menu was adventurous, fun, diverse and surprisingly fruity. It turns out that Colombia has very high quality in such and I still remember the alluring fresh-sweet-salty-creamy flavours of the pineapple with goat’s cheese and celeriac. Three ingredients is in general maximum on the villains’ plates.
But what I remember mostly about Villanos en Bermudas was a feeling. A feeling of belonging simply by being a guest in their culinary three-story bachelor house, which quickly also became my home away from home.
Above: With the villains at Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants Ceremony. Below: Yours truly at the 3rd floor fantasyland toilet at Villanos en Bermudas.
And here’s the thing; you can get superb food, delicious wines and outstanding decor in many places around the world. What makes a place like Villanos en Bermudas go beyond this, is the personalities within, the universe they create and the sincerity you feel when they share it with you.
I felt this sincerity when I first met Sergio Meza in 2012 at MAD Symposium in Copenhagen, where this, then, 22-year old rookie with grand ginger curls stood out in the crowd and we became friends.
The same sincerity I and everyone else who visit Villanos en Bermudas feel today. In fact it’s evident how all around the villains’ very much want them to succeed, and with good reason.
Everyone loves a good afro.
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Nico López and Sergio Meza exclusively offer their excellence to lectures, food festivals, consultancy and exclusive dinner parties.
In case of interest or/and press, please contact Kristian Brask Thomsen at:
Bon Vivant Communications is a culinary embassy representing star chefs and restaurants, chateaux and high-end wineries as well as working close together with various luxury hotels, gourmets festivals and bespoke concierges services.
The diplomacy speaks to a strong network of 600 journalists, bloggers and writers, as well as 2500 luxury diners around the globe.
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Hungry for more? Dig into the in-depth US-article on Villanos en Bermudas.
