From September 28 to October 4, 2026 we're taking part in Mérida Restaurant Week with a $199 menu: the personal Bandeja Paisa — the same one that's on our regular menu, with nothing taken out — and a house lemonade. It's our first time in the event.
The price isn't ours to set. $199 is the event's flat rate, the same for every restaurant that signs up under that format; what each kitchen decides is what to serve for it. We decided not to invent a dish for the occasion and to bring out the one we already are.
What Mérida Restaurant Week is
It's the restaurant week run by Yucatán's national restaurant chamber, Canirac, and this is its eighth edition — it ran in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2025. For those seven days, the restaurants that sign up serve a special menu at a fixed price.
There are two ways in this year. The usual one is the $199 menu, which covers a main course and a drink. The other is new this edition — it's called «Experiencias MRW», and there each restaurant proposes something of its own at whatever price it sets. We're going with the first.
How the event works, on its own site
All 185 participating restaurants, searchable by cuisine and area
One thing you notice opening the event's directory: among the cuisines you can filter by — Yucatecan, Mexican, Italian, Japanese, grills, seafood and a handful more — there's no Colombian. We ended up filed under «international», which is as close as the list gets.
What our $199 menu is
The full personal Bandeja Paisa, plus a house lemonade. This is how the dish reads on our everyday menu:
The dish that best represents Colombia. An explosion of sweet, salty and crunchy flavors on a single platter. Beans, pork belly, chorizo, beef, a fried egg, avocado, rice, plantain and an arepa
Any other week, the personal Bandeja Paisa is $250 and the lemonade is charged separately. That subtraction is the whole explanation of the Restaurant Week menu: it isn't a smaller plate at a promo price, it's the entire plate at an event price.
The lemonade is the house one and you pick the flavor at the table. We deliberately don't name it on the event's artwork: we make several, and we'd rather whoever comes in chooses.
If you've never ordered a Bandeja Paisa
It's the dish of Antioquia, the region around Medellín, and it works backwards from a plate with sides: there's no star with an entourage, there are seven or eight things meant to be eaten together, in different combinations. Every forkful comes out different depending on what it picks up, and that's the point. It comes from muleteers' food — people who walked all day and ate once.
What goes on a Bandeja Paisa, and why there's so much of it
We were at the launch, at City Hall
Canirac presented this edition at Mérida's City Hall, with sign-ups still open for restaurants wanting to join. We went, and filmed this:
When to come
The seven days run September 28 to October 4. The $199 menu is ordered here at the restaurant, during our usual hours, and there's no coupon and no sign-up — you just order it. We're on Calle 62, steps from Parque de Santa Lucía.
If you're coming with a group, or on a weekend, book a table: that's the week the whole city goes out to eat, and you can tell.
