When thinking about Bolivian alcohol, the most likely things to come to mind would be beers such as Paceña or Huari, Tarijan wines or singani. Besides these select few, the world of Bolivian spirits may seem fairly barren. However, it is the aim of Daniel Lonsdale and Joan Carbó—and their liquor company, La República—to change this. Their goal: to create a unique drink for the premium market that is distinctly Bolivian.

Having already pioneered their first Bolivian spirit—Supay (named after the Quechua and Aymara god of death), a spiced liquor produced from the locoto pepper—the Bolivian-Spanish duo are now set to move into the area of gin. Daniel is no stranger to the world of spirits, coming from a family with a history of spirit-production. In fact, his grandfather produced some of Bolivia’s first dry gin, though only from imported ingredients. Joan, who is Spanish by birth, drew on his background in chemistry to create this new brand of gin. However, if you’re thinking of the dry, chemical-tasting alcohol that you get back home, you’d better think again. This is Andean gin.

Gin is produced by flavouring alcohol with certain ingredients called botanicals, including juniper berries, which are found in all gins, including this new Andean variety. According to Daniel and Joan, though, there is a crucial difference between their gin and all the other gins on the market.
‘We try to use the best, natural, freshest ingredients’, Daniel says to me while pouring out a sizeable measure of the clear liquid. ‘We get the juniper from Macedonia and the cilantro we buy from an American company, as well as the cardamon. Everything else is local: the orange peel, the lemon peel, the anise, the cinnamon, the ginger and the rest of the typical Bolivian flavours.’
And tasting the gin myself, it really does stand out—the flavours are subtle, the aroma is gentle and fruity. When compared to the harsh, burning sensation produced by some variants of the spirit back home, the delicate blend of gentle sensations is pleasantly surprising.

However, it is not only the classic gin ingredients that are sourced locally: Daniel and Joan have also added to their gin many solely Bolivian ingredients, such as the tumbo fruit and locoto and ulupica peppers. ‘That is what we’re trying to do with this product—we’re trying to show the diversity of everything we have in Bolivia’, says Daniel.

Not only are most of the ingredients Bolivian, but the production facilities are located in El Alto, more than three and a half thousand meters above sea level. While this may seem somewhat insignificant, the altitude at which the gin is distilled is, in fact, a key factor in its production. The lower atmospheric pressure that comes with the high altitude means that both alcohol and water boil at lower temperatures. Because of this, the gin retains a distinct complexity of flavour. Normally during the distilling process the high heat causes much of the flavour to evaporate; however, this altitude allows Daniel and Joan to distill at lower temperatures and to maintain much of the flavour of the fresh local Bolivian fruits and herbs.

As Daniel mixes my gin to give me a slightly more jazzed-up variant on the traditional gin and tonic, Joan says, ‘For me, the juniper berries are what you really smell in other gins, but in here, juniper is at the same level as the other aromas. To me, this is the true meaning of balance’.
‘I think it is important to have a personalised flavour’, says Daniel -- and I believe that here lies the quality which makes Daniel and Joan’s gin truly individual. The root idea was not simply to make a gin but to make a taste of Bolivia, and rather than take the well-trodden road of making a traditional gin they have worked to showcase Bolivian ingredients and to utilise their unique setting. ‘We don't just want to do what the people of Europe have been doing for the past hundreds of years’, says Joan. This gin is special: distinctly Andean -- distinctly Bolivian. .

A Quechua soup originating from Potosí, kallapurca is thought to have been popularised around the 17th century. Characterised above all by the fact that the broth is boiled using heated pieces of volcanic rock placed in the bowl, it likely originated from the era when fire cooking was less common in the colder regions of Bolivia. Although it is an ancient dish, its nature has evolved over time -- today’s kallapurca is produced with more garlic and other flavours brought over by the Spanish conquistadores. 

The environment in which this dish emerged is key to understanding its nature. Potosí is a cold, barren part of the country, where campesinos have to exert back-breaking effort to farm the meagre produce the harsh land is willing to yield. Often starting their workday at 5 am, by 10 am kallapurca is the dish of choice. It’s a spicy and heavy dish—nutritionally perfect for the campesinos to help them recuperate and prepare for many more hours of gruelling work. Furthermore, kallapurca has its roots placed firmly in Potosí’s culinary tradition; the history and rituals of the region reflected in this ordinary food, that remains as popular now as it has ever been.

As a traditional dish, it requires some ingredients that are often not possible to find outside Bolivia, including willkaparu and mote pelado (peeled corn kernels). Kallapurca is rich in both calories and protein, which lends itself well to manual labor high in the Andes -- giving those under the cosh the energy, strength and endurance to keep on going.
Kallapurca cannot be reproduced so easily in other parts of the country, not least because its signature volcanic rock has to be transported from Potosí. Nevertheless, it is still available—though not common—in other parts of the Andes. In La Paz, the best place to find kallapurca is on Calle Conchitas in the San Pedro neighborhood, near Franz Tamayo University.

We spoke to a Swiss tourist named Hannah who had recently eaten the dish in Potosí, and she expressed incredulity: ‘I couldn’t believe it! A soup of stones! I thought it was some kind of joke’. Very few ever master the preparation of kallapurca. Luisa, from Potosí, said, ‘I tried to learn how to cook it so as to serve at home, but it just couldn’t be done. I think only certain people can ever learn’. Despite being such a unique dish to us foreigners, it’s perfectly normal for locals, both for the older generation who work and also for the youngsters, who know it as a foolproof hangover cure. With its thick and spicy flavour, kallapurca is always being reinvented. Now it seems it has found a new life as the top choice for those potosinos who can’t remember much about their previous night...

The Unconventional (or Downright Cranky) Restaurateurs of La Paz

Even before I learned that this issue of Bolivian Express would be food themed, my housemates were already overwhelming with me with restaurants to visit, street stalls to try, markets to die for. Eating is clearly big business in La Paz, where six different salteña cafes can exist on the same street and still turn a profit. What impresses me most, though, is talk of those eateries that are decidedly not big business: family-run or one-man enterprises, seemingly scraping what they need to get by.

Over the course of my first week here, I discovered some of La Paz’s greatest ‘anti-business’ eateries: places built into family homes, where chefs are waiters and serve bills on the same napkin you just ate with—and where the owners sometimes make no effort to hide an intense and personal dislike for their customers. What links all these, from the friendliest to the most hostile, is their resistance to the kind of sleek, monotonous corporatism that increasingly dominates British high street dining, where the chain reigns supreme. Instead, these places revel in their own glorious eccentricity. But can this last?

One of the major consequences of Bolivia’s recent economic boom appears to be the success of fast food outlets. Ask Bolivians why McDonald’s famously failed in their country (the company shut the last of its doors here in 2002) and there’s a good chance they will tell you this was not because of the cultural rejectionThere are always two sides of the story, and while fast food, or even more upmarket chains such as Starbucks, could certainly represent the corporatization and monetisation of food culture, they could also simply suggest a more gastronomically complex society. Many Londoners can start their night in a little-known speakeasy and end it ferociously nuzzling a post-club McDonald’s—so why not paceños? Bolivia is at an interesting juncture now, in which emerging chains could become either an addition to or a replacement of traditional eateries. Exactly what will happen is hard to guess. All I can say is you’ll miss those handwritten menus when they’re gone. of fast food, but because it was too expensive. But Bolivians are getting richer, and the presence of Burger King, as well as numerous home-grown brands—such as Pollos Copacabana, Api Happy and Panchita—show that locals enjoy their quick carbs as much as anyone.

Jose Maria Pantoja, owner of Los Nopalitos, feels no fear of competition from the fast food giants. For him, these are two different market niches, both of which La Paz has room for. After all, for all the numerous high street chains to be found in Western food culture, there is also the backlash trend from those missing the intimacy and uniqueness that chains inevitably lose—think of Rachel Khoo’s two-person restaurant in her Paris apartment, or Mayfair’s re-creation of Phileas Fogg’s gentleman’s club (reborn as slick cocktail bar).

There are always two sides of the story, and while fast food, or even more upmarket chains such as Starbucks, could certainly represent the corporatization and monetisation of food culture, they could also simply suggest a more gastronomically complex society. Many Londoners can start their night in a little-known speakeasy and end it ferociously nuzzling a post-club McDonald’s—so why not paceños? Bolivia is at an interesting juncture now, in which emerging chains could become either an addition to or a replacement of traditional eateries. Exactly what will happen is hard to guess. All I can say is you’ll miss those handwritten menus when they’re gone.

Los Nopalitos (Avenida Ecuador between Guachalla y Rosendo Gutierrez)
Los Nopalitos is perhaps the archetypal example of laid-back eccentricity. Founded by José Maria Pantoja after he fell in love with Mexican cooking while living there in the 1980s, Los Nopalitos features walls decorated as an homage to the country’s bandits and revolutionaries. The location was chosen because one of José’s friends was already living there, and the restaurant retains its homely feel, right up to the shower and bathtub that remain to surprise visitors to the baño. Even the staff seems more like a family—José works alone, alongside one chef, whose baby son José calls el diablo in the ringing tones of an exorcist-performing priest.

José prioritises the freshness of his ingredients—‘my quesadilla comes with the streaky texture and flaky edges that show it is hot from the pan, not out of a packet’—even where such attention to detail means compromising on size. Indeed, the dinky-but-tasty portions can make it seem as if you are getting a tasty snack from your grandma rather than a restaurant meal, but this is all part of its charm. A trip to Los Nopalitos is not just about the taste of the food, but the taste of one man’s way of life.

Chifa La Hoja Verde (Av. Ecuador 2514 esq. Belisario Salinas)
With its stucco tiles and mismatched tables and chairs, La Hoja Verde’s aesthetic is that of a Sino-sized greasy spoon—there may be soya sauce and toothpicks on the table instead of salt and pepper, and monochrome ink prints on the walls instead of calendar pinups, but this is the only clue that you’re not getting your English fry-up here. The food works by taking the best of Chinese takeout (the copious oil, the deliciously metallic taste of MSG) and running with it. Not exactly haute cuisine, then, but shrewd about what many punters want.

The real attraction of La Hoja Verde is, however, its owner: Señor Ye. He engages with the stereotype of the chino renegon with gusto, wantonly making me move seats (and one family move an entire table) midway through the meal, as if staging some kind of musical chairs for his private enjoyment. When taking too long to order, he simply walks away—perhaps to give us more time to choose, perhaps simply to catch the football scores. According to the online food review site Buenos Restaurantes de La Paz, the reason for La Hoja Verde’s total lack of publicity—the restaurant doesn’t even have sign on its shuttered front—is because Ye’s wife refuses to be belaboured with any more cooking. An enjoyable bit of guesswork, but hard to swallow for those who, like me, cannot see Ye taking lip from anyone. This, though, is the joy of La Hoja Verde: go for guilty food and plenty of mythmaking.

La Costilla de Adan (Calle Armaza #2947)

Roberto Cazorla Guzman tells me that his venture first started because friends would always want to go come back to drink at his house after a night out. One day he simply bowed to pressure—and La Costilla de Adan was born. A single glimpse at the bar, however, shows that the creation of La Costilla that we see today has been a far greater labour of love. La Costilla is a veritable Alice in Wonderland explosion of strange and marvellous artefacts—all starting with a coffee can that Roberto ferreted from his grandmother at age 5.

Through a life spent in much of Europe and South America, and in a variety of professions (architect, graphic designer, hairdresser), Roberto’s collection slowly amassed. It is these souvenirs that crowd the walls and jostle from the ceiling in today’s bar. Reeling off a few of the best, Roberto lists a crystal rock mirror, tables adapted from glass-topped bathtubs—just a few of the 5,000-plus objects that decorate his bar.

But La Costilla is decidedly not about being flashy. Even as he plans a second-floor extension in which to serve snacks (goat cheese empanadas, tamales from his homeland Tupiza), Roberto still proudly talks of his spot as ‘the best kept secret in Sopocachi’—customers have to knock on La Costilla’s deceptively residential door to come in. And he has reason for wanting to keep privacy, after all—Roberto’s house is attached to La Costilla: ‘I have a cat and seven dogs!’

For Roberto, the relaxed feel of the bar comes as a plus. He has no security and has never needed it. It is possible to pay proper attention to customers, sometimes with surprising results—most notably the night he found himself serving two schoolmates that he had not seen in 25 years, one now living in England, the other in Japan. A fitting reunion in a bar that is so much the culmination of many years and places travelled.