Selma Medellín: Álvaro Clavijo takes his bistro to El Poblado
The El Chato chef's shared-plates restaurant opens its first address outside Bogotá, in a boutique hotel, with a Young Chef finalist in the kitchen and fish that never sees a freezer.
Selma Medellín has opened in El Poblado, the first outpost outside Bogotá for the shared-plates restaurant of Álvaro Clavijo, whose El Chato was named No.1 in Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants 2025.
The new Selma sits at Carrera 33 #5G-23, in the neighbourhood that concentrates much of Medellín's restaurant trade, according to the Colombian food site FoodieCL. It occupies the ground floor of 23 Living, a boutique hotel whose food offer was built around chef-led names: Bar-a-Van, from chef Jhon Zárate, takes the second floor, and a rooftop concept from the local restaurant group Grupo Carmen is due to complete the building, Revista Axxis reported in July.
Clavijo is not running the pass himself. The kitchen is in the hands of Diego Ramírez, one of the four Colombian cooks in the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Latin America final in Panama, where the finalists cook their signature dishes on 29 September.
A Bogotá formula gets a second city; the Antioquia pantry decides how much of it survives.
What Selma Medellín serves
The format is the one that made Selma the looser sibling of El Chato in Bogotá: plates ordered in several rounds and put in the middle of the table, cocktails and music, and none of the protocol of a tasting menu. Part of the Bogotá menu has travelled north; other dishes were written or adapted around what Antioquia produces.
The clearest rule concerns fish. Selma Medellín does not freeze it: fresh fish arrives from suppliers several times a week and goes into the kitchen according to that week's rotation. Vegetables and proteins come from a network of Colombian producers the team began working with before the doors opened.
Ramírez spent his first weeks visiting growers and suppliers, and the local pantry turned out wider than he had planned for. "I thought it would be harder, that many things would have to come from Bogotá. Instead I've found that Medellín has a great many suppliers," he told FoodieCL.
El Chato's standing, Antioquia's pantry
The opening follows the best year yet for Clavijo's flagship. In December 2025 El Chato climbed from No.3 to No.1 on Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants, the first Colombian restaurant to top the ranking, edging out Kjolle in Lima, according to the organisers.
Medellín has its own cooks and groups, and the team's stated aim is for the new Selma to develop a personality of its own rather than copy the Bogotá formula, which means the Antioquia pantry should show up on the plates over time.
The first test of how much Medellín changes Selma will come from the menu itself, not from the ranking. The more immediate one comes on 29 September, when Ramírez cooks in Panama City for a place in the global Young Chef final in Milan.
