Friday Nights in Colombia Mean One Thing: Salchipapas
The warmth of those Fridays ‘let me know what to look for in the future’
By Daniela Morales
My summer Friday nights up until I left for the U.S. revolved around one thing: salchipapas.
Every Friday in the corner store close to my best friend Maria’s grandparents’ house, the ladies who worked there took out a metal fryer, a common sign in multiple neighborhoods in Cali, Colombia, that the hard part of the week was over. On those Fridays, and most weekends, they sold traditionally greasy food, most of them involving potatoes: papa rellena, papa aborrajada, pastel de yuca, aborrajado. None of those were of interest, though.
For Maria and me, the only one that mattered was the salchipapas. They are deep-fried creole potatoes with sausage and sauces on top served in a small styrofoam container if you get them from your local corner store, as we did.
In restaurants, they often appear under the fast-food section, and are done with french fries instead of Creole potatoes. Most commonly, they are served with salsa rosada as the base sauce with the option for other kinds of sauces. As for this particular salchipapas that I ate on Friday nights with friends, we had at our disposal pineapple sauce, which we called the Green Sauce, and another that tasted like honey mustard.
During the week, we saved money for the salchipapas on Fridays. We kept the loose change from our lunch money on our night tables, leaving it to gather up enough for the special treat on Friday. Of course, there were times when one of us didn’t manage to gather the right amount, but if that happened, we would buy each other the food or share one between two.
And so every Friday at around 7 p.m, when the orange glow of the lamps illuminated the streets, we would stop what we were doing — playing or watching the Disney channel — to order our salchipapas. Sometimes we waited for them seated right by the fryer, our stomachs growling, longing for their greasy deliciousness as we drank a soda to calm our bellies. Other times, we weren’t as hungry and would make our order and go back to playing soccer in the street. Once the ladies called us — “niños!” — we’d run for them like excited puppies and pay them the 1500 pesos we owed them for the salchipapas.
The salchipapas were something that united us. We’d wait for everyone to have theirs before we dug in, sitting side-by-side on the edge of the sidewalk. We stole potatoes and sausages out of each other’s portions, talking about how awesome and good they were. We enjoyed the cold breeze as it replaced the oppressive heat of the day, heard the German shepherd at the end of the street bark at some bypasser, and made plans for what was next. “Are we going to Juan Jose’s house after this? To play PS3?” Some nights we followed up on that. Others, we just sat on a brick bench next to Maria’s grandparents’ house, looking at the stars, talking about that treehouse we wanted to build in her yard.
Looking back on it, all of that seems like a fantasy: a dream that gave me the taste of warmth and home one night just to let me know what to look for in the future.
I haven’t been able to find the same kind of warmth, that simplicity and friendship offered in those days, since moving to the U.S. I don’t know if it’s just a result of growing up or the change of country. Probably both.
However, I do see glimpses of those feelings when I take some Colombian food to school. I usually choose to share sweets because those are easier to transport from home to school, and most often people can’t resist sugar. I’ve taken manjar blanco, which is a version of dulce de leche that comes in a totuma — the dried shell of a fruit common in Central and South America. I usually start eating it right before class starts, when my classmates trickle into the room. There are always double-takes and inquisitive stares, but nobody says anything. I make my move after the break, offering my poetry teacher some first. From there on out, my classmates are drawn in like bees to flowers, and I reach for the multiple spoons I packed specifically for this purpose. There’s one classmate, a real food enthusiast, that I can always count on to be the first one to approach, encouraging the rest of the class to satiate their curiosity.
He raises the bite to his mouth, a creamy bit of manjar blanco on the tip of the spoon. I watch as he savors it, his brows furrowed, trying to get the last bit of flavor. And he gives his opinion: “It’s pretty sweet. A little too sweet for me.” Understandable.
But maybe, there’s the possibility it would have been the perfect sweetness sitting on the edge of a sidewalk in Cali, waiting for a serving of salchipapas to be ready.
Daniela Morales, 16, was born in Cali, Colombia, and moved to Chicago in 2015. Writing played an important role in her adaptation to a new country and culture, and it has remained a central feature of her life.
