One of the top five foodie experiences of my life. It's incredible. Breakfast of champions. Hi guys
it's John Quilter AKA The Food Busker. Now you know me as the guy who cooks food on the
street, but what you don't know is 3 years ago I set up a great coffee business called
CRU Kafe, with Colin and our third founder Bodil. It's been a rollercoaster ride setting
up the business over the last 3 years, and now we've got one of our biggest challenges
yet. We've been invited to showcase our coffee at one of the most important dates in the
coffee calendar. The London Coffee Festival. We're so proud of our coffee, but we want
to create an exceptional blend that's gonna wow at the festival. But the clocks ticking,
if we're gonna develop one in time. And to get the best blend we're gonna have to go
to one of the best countries in the world for coffee, we're going to Colombia.
We were interested to go on this journey because in our own separate lives we've been on adventures
and when we opened the business this was at the top of the list, but we just couldn't
afford to go. Colombia is a very very special place for
coffee, it's the second largest producer of coffee in Latin America and produces some
of the finest coffees from around the world. The north of Colombia particularly Sierra
Nevada regions a place where some wonderful coffees come from particularity classic tasting
coffees, I just hope these guys don't mess it up.
It's a long way to go to get it wrong. 4:30am in Bogota just spent 12 hours on a flight
how you feeling? Not good. Not good, alright let's get some kip.
My first impressions of Bogota, what an incredible city, just a heaving bustling huge urban environment
so full of energy, amazing food on the street corners.
Peanuts, coconut and pumpkin
Just some of the best graffiti I've ever seen. So while Colin met with some coffee people,
I went off to investigate the city. I think the highlight for me of Bogota, Paloquemao
market, I've never seen fruit and veg of so much colour, it's just dazzling how beautiful
everything is. Eduardo how are you doing? Nice to see you.
So Eduardo is a famous chef in Bogota and he's gonna show us around, so lead on.
The name is Guanabana. I've never tasted anything like this, its like fibrous but soaking full
of juices fibrous. It's amazing. Granadilla. So this is the first food that they give to
children in Colombia and it's really delicate, look at that.
What is this? Waca, Electric leaf
Taste. I understand why it's called electric now, it's literally like its tickling
on the back where I was eating it, its like a little gentle electricity. It's incredible.
Lemon ants
Lemon ants. The head is more concentrated, lemon sour. Takes a bit of time to be released.
Wow, ants are the lemon. I reached out to a great company in Colombia
called Lohas beans, it stands for the same things we stand for. They work with these
small farmers and help them reinvest their savings and earnings back into their farms
to constantly try to improve quality and that is such an important piece because the improvement
of quality is what improves their lives. The company started in Colombia maybe 6 years
ago. We had only 2 people in the team. The company decided to only sell and buy organic
coffee because we believe in the sustainability. Are you anticipating 2017 to be a good harvest
or? Very good harvest, we have a lot of increase of production and the quality of the coffee
is very different than last year. And you expect the prices this year to go up from
last year? My goodness I really don't know. The market now is very high. Thank you very
much for having us, and I'm really looking forward to visiting the plantations in Sierra
Nevada. It's gonna be great Right now street food is a massive thing in
Colombia and as you travel round you see these little carts everywhere, it's a really traditional
thing to get your coffee in the morning from one cart and then come and get your breakfast
from another and this lovely lady has allowed me to jump and gatecrash the party and crack
on and cook a nice little Colombian dish. SO come on.
Hello, how are you, say hello to FoodTube. What is this called?
Okay, so it's like a baby omelette and it's called little eggs. little bit of butter, let me do it let em
do it. Little bit of salt, i like it. You can see the butter sizzling, perfect get that going in
Lid on chef. Now twist? okay. And then we're gonna do ham and cheese. She's
working me hard. What's this called? It's a corn, kind of like a corn tortilla, very
traditional thing. Little bit of butter and then you put the omelette inside, Yes chef
I'm on it. Then this back on and then that guy. Look at that. Perfect! Good on yah. How
cool is that a come and have a look at this. Right I'm going in. Oh mate, breakfast of
champions. Its important for us to go direct to source,
you know to really build and force those relationships on the ground. Smells really good, smells
Colombian coffee. The one that your having right now is from Narino, just from the south
west of Colombia, and this one is from Quindio, this is one of the parts of the coffee triangle
of Colombia which goes from Quindio, Cladas and Risaralda. Also Sierra Nevada, I believe
you are travelling there, its like a an hour probably 2 hour drive from Santa Marta to
Sierra Nevada, it's close to here and we call it Parque Tayrona, which is really humid really
hot but its beautiful. I can not wait.
Yeh no, don't give me a hand. I've got it all. Hang on
Hello its John. Oh hey how are you? Yeh yeh yeh, So your from Santa Marta?
Brilliant. How much do we want? Erm, well how much have you got?
Yeh i think we are absolutely fine to take that. Yeh put our name down for that, cool. Alright well nice
one, we'll see you in a couple days, see you later, Bye. Anytime you wanna stop filming
Ed and give us a hand just let me know yeh.
Here you go buddy. Cheers to Bogota. Yeh man.
So how was your day? Insane, had the best day ever, cool market, did some cooking, incredible.
What about you? Hooked up with Lohas Coffee. Got the lay of the land, kicked the tyres,
feeling pretty comfortable about it. Nice. and cant wait to get to, there the ones that
are gonna take us to Santa Marta and take us there. Oh Really? because those guys rung
me today and they were like John we got this container for you, are you up for it, I was
like Boom! We'll take it. You committed to a container? Yeh. I wish you hadn't done that,
We're not, I'm just not comfortable yet, there's so much up in the air and we still really
need to really taste that coffee.
We just traveled all the way up to Sierra Nevada Mountains
to meet this trouble maker. Just look how tasty this looks. It's unbelievable
when you see it, you see all the things that are involved.