Celele Wins Sustainable Restaurant Award at The World’s 50 Best

With Owner-Chef Jaime Rodríguez at the helm, Celele is a restaurant designed to celebrate the best of Colombian cuisine, taking particular inspiration from the country’s Caribbean coastline. Jaime is also the founder of the Caribe Lab Project, for which he’s travelled extensively throughout Colombia to research its food heritage, indigenous ingredients and rich biodiversity. Celele is the direct result of this project: a way for Jaime to share his learnings and the country’s unique gastronomic culture with the world. 

While Celele’s overall approach to sustainable operations is highly impressive, it’s this attention to provenance and deep commitment to celebrating native ingredients that really helped them to stand out for our team of Sustainability Consultants in evaluating the submissions for this award. From their long-term, direct partnerships with farmers and fishers to reflecting cultural identity through menu design and community-driven initiatives, Celele offers a deep and layered sense of place. 

Our Managing Director Juliane Caillouette Noble said of the win, “Our team particularly loved their dedication to native ingredients and native partnerships. They purchase directly from farmers and fishers to guarantee fair and stable income, and deliberately support sustainable operations — like those using traditional fishing methods that protect local stocks and ecosystems. They also buy fresh flowers and vegetables from the Granitos de Paz community, an initiative that creates urban gardens in vulnerable areas of the city, generating opportunities and improving quality of life for locals. Colombia is richer in biodiversity than any nation in the world, with the highest density of species per square metre, and we’re so impressed with how Celele's practices and policies are helping to protect that biodiversity.”  

Let’s dig into why Celele is such a deserving winner. 

Responsible sourcing at Celele 

Provenance is embedded into both ethos and operations at Celele. Evolving with the seasons, menus here are designed to explore both underutilised native ingredients and the multiple influences that continue to shape the culture in Cartagena. They prioritise working with locally sourced plants and sustainably sourced meats, significantly reducing the carbon footprint associated with food transportation and production, and they do not serve beef due to its hefty environmental impact. 

Their procurement policy and menu design focus on native products from the Colombian Caribbean, placing a high importance on supporting small-scale producers. They buy directly from farmers and fishers without intermediaries to ensure fair and sustainable income for their families, and payments are made immediately. They choose producers and suppliers who use sustainable methods of farming and fishing, ensuring the protection of species and their habitats. Celele maintains a particularly close, long-term relationship with communities in the Guajira territory, built over more than nine years of continuous visits and collaboration. The team also shares any relevant research findings with its network to help further collective knowledge.  

Celele provides staff training on responsible fishing practices, enabling front-of-house employees to educate customers about the origins of the seafood on their plates — just one way in which the restaurant encourages education on the region’s gastronomic culture and biodiversity. In order to increase global understanding around these subjects, Celele has also facilitated familiarisation projects with journalists from various nationalities. 

Social sustainability at Celele 

Celele offers a supportive work environment aimed at team well-being and development, aiming for a positive impact on employees, suppliers and the wider community. The focus is on internal growth and operational improvement rather than expansion, always maintaining a strong, ongoing commitment to ethical principles and core values. Their approach prioritises a workplace culture that fosters personal growth and well-being. They even offer an interest-free internal loan fund to support employees in improving their housing conditions.  

When it comes to their wider impact, Celele’s sourcing policies help to support local livelihoods, keeping money in the regional economy. In addition to buying from the farmers and fishers mentioned above, they also source fresh flowers and vegetables from the Productive Gardens for Sustainable Development project, an initiative from social enterprise Granitos de Paz. This project seeks to empower and strengthen the economic autonomy of women in vulnerable areas of Colombia by helping them to cultivate urban vegetable gardens, creating opportunities and improving quality of life.  

Celele is also keen to share knowledge through their social media, fostering a digital community that encourages open dialogue and collaboration across the gastronomic sector.   

Celele’s environmental impact 

The restaurant uses filters to purify drinking water for staff and diners, eliminating the need for bottled water and reducing environmental impact. Dishwashing systems incorporate water recirculation to keep water use at a minimum.  

Menus at Celele are designed ‘from the shell to the seed’, using often discarded by-products in their entirety. One example of this is orejero, an indigenous tree with a dense canopy that plays an important role in local ecosystems, including providing shade and shelter for birds and insects. Every part of the plant finds a use in the Celele kitchen; even the shells have a meaty flavour that works well in sauces. In fact, over 90% of the agricultural ingredients used in the restaurant are used completely, generating zero waste.   

For the last 12 months, the team has been actively collaborating with a company to recycle materials like glass, cardboard and outdated electronics. Through this partnership, they make a tangible contribution to strengthening the circular economy, reducing the environmental impact of their daily operations and extending the useful life cycle of various materials. 

Read more about Celele at their website or learn about The Sustainable Restaurant Association’s long-standing partnership with The World’s 50 Best here. For more insights and stories from sustainable restaurants, hotels and bars across the globe, follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn and sign up to our newsletter!    

Lead photo from Celele’s Instagram page.