Morning time is my forever favorite part of the day. And so breakfasts, too, are usually the meals that I enjoy having the most. Perhaps not so much because of the food itself, but because of the feelings of appreciation and peace that take over me during this precious time of the day.

This Saturday morning I decided to break my typical hostel routine and went for a breakfast at Plaza De Mercado La América, a nearby local market in Laureles, Medellín. I wanted to try out the famous morning dish in Colombia: arepa de chócolo (corn patties with fresh cheese and butter).

Mercado La América is a typical Colombian indoor food market where you can buy pretty much all the food that one can grow in this beautiful country: from fresh meat cuts and coffee beans to a great variety of fruit (many of which I am still unfamiliar with). There are small restaurants, too, selling empanadas, obleas, pan de bono, bandeja paisa, buñuelos and other regional specialities.

I was lucky to arrive this early. At a few minutes past 8 am, the market was calm and quiet, waiting for the weekend hustle and bustle to begin. A cleaning lady in the corner was just finishing up mopping the floor, while at one of the fruit stands, there still seemed to be more sellers than customers.

I bought a couple of plátanos maduros (ripe plantains) before heading to a cosy little place right in the middle of the market, called Restaurante El Buen Sabor (which means "Restaurant of The Good Taste" in English, what a lovely name!). There, three middle-aged women were already in full swing cooking the dishes of the day, turning arepas on an open fire, warming up milk, and generally just getting ready for their first customers to arrive.

A sweet, home-like smell was coming from the half-open pots. It reminded me of the chicken soup that my Nona used to make for us. I could almost see her in front of the stove, slightly stressed out and in her sweaty cotton T-shirt, mixing her boiling soup with a big spoon, which she then passed to me so that I could give it a taste, too, and offer my thoughts on whether the soup was salty enough.

I was among the first people to sit down at the long metal table overlooking the restaurant's open kitchen. With my broken, hardly existent Spanish, I managed (after a couple of tries) to order an arepa and a cup of plain dark coffee. It was hard to believe that a simple dish like this could taste so good. Delicious!

Soon more local customers started to stop by, and I couldn't help but to notice that everybody was ordering the same thing: arepas, scrambled eggs with onions, tomatoes and meat, along with some kind of soup—which, funnily enough, I later realized were actually big mugs of chocolate milk!

I took out my journal to capture some of these impressions in writing and smiled to myself in gratitude for having to witness this scene, right there in the middle of the market surrounded by local residents on a random Saturday morning.

"The sweetness of the smell," I wrote down. "This is what I want to remember from this place. The smell that also brings up other fond memories."

Kindly,

Neva.