La Perseverancia District Market

Tolú still operates among the market stalls, where office workers from neighboring districts pick up prepared food for lunch. Its menu features Caribbean mote de queso alongside Bogotá ajiaco, a thick soup with chicken, corn, guascas, and three kinds of potato. The Tolú sign, vegetable stalls, and plates of prepared food all come together here in one hall.

Under one roof, vegetable stalls stand alongside small kitchens serving dishes from different parts of Colombia. The word “District” in the official name means that this is one of Bogotá’s city markets. It takes its name from the La Perseverancia neighborhood—“perseverance” in Spanish. In the early twentieth century, workers at Bavaria Brewery and their families built homes on these slopes closer to the factory. Farmers from nearby settlements came to them, selling their crops and animals. In the early nineteen forties, a permanent market was built for this trade.

The transformation of the old market into a well-known lunch spot began with Luz Dary Cogollo (Mamá Luz), a Caribbean cook who needed to start earning a living again. After her divorce, she sold prepared lunches from a cart; her eldest son walked beside her and poured juice from a large canister. Later, Cogollo got a place at another Bogotá market, La Concordia Market, and opened the restaurant Tolú there. She cooked fish, coconut rice, and the Caribbean cheese soup mote de queso. Students nicknamed her Mamá Luz, and within a few years the number of lunches reached as many as three hundred a day.

La Concordia Market was closed for repairs. Cogollo lost her restaurant, left the equipment with the owner of a warehouse to settle a debt, and for a while took any kitchen work she could find. Then the city institute gave her a stall here, at La Perseverancia District Market. She sold two or three lunches a day. There was no gas in the space, her former customers did not make it here, and she had nowhere else to go.

Cogollo began asking office workers from neighboring districts why they passed the market by. They replied that they disliked its neglected appearance and the way food was served. So she brought together other women cooks. They changed the dishes, tidied up the counters, and put together hearty lunch menus for people from nearby offices. At the same time, Cogollo added ajiaco to the Caribbean dishes—a thick Bogotá soup with chicken, corn, the herb guascas, and three varieties of potato. The grandmother of her children, who came from the mountainous region of Boyacá, had once taught her how to tell those varieties apart.

Cogollo decided to enter the ajiaco in a city competition. On the application, she listed not the restaurant Tolú but La Perseverancia District Market: she needed visitors to look for that address after a victory. The ajiaco was judged the best in Bogotá. The market’s name appeared in newspapers, more people came, and later a Bogotá restaurant award nominated all of La Perseverancia in the Colombian cuisine category. Then a film crew for the series Street Food: Latin America came here, and Netflix viewers saw the market.

Tolú still operates here. Its menu still includes the Caribbean mote de queso, with which Mamá Luz first began earning a living, alongside the Bogotá ajiaco that she entered in the competition under La Perseverancia’s name.