Holidays & Cultural
Easter Catering in Medellín
Medellin Elite Catering caters Easter in Medellín, from meat-free Holy Week lunches to an Easter Sunday brunch with an egg hunt in the garden. We cook for local families keeping Semana Santa customs and for expats who want the Easter table they grew up with.
Semana Santa is one of the biggest travel weeks of the Colombian year, so many of our Easter orders go to fincas and holiday homes rather than city apartments. We plan those deliveries around the highway traffic and the shuttered shops of Holy Thursday and Good Friday.
Our kitchen has cooked Holy Week menus every year since 2019. That experience tells us which fish travels well, what quantities a four-day finca weekend needs and how to keep chocolate eggs from melting in a sunny garden.
- Itemized quotes available
- Bilingual English and Spanish coordinators
Plan your event
Our Easter Catering
We cover the whole of Holy Week: fish lunches on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, family meals on Saturday and a brunch or lunch on Easter Sunday. Orders range from a drop-off fish lunch for 10 to a staffed garden brunch for 60.
A good share of our Easter deliveries go to fincas and houses just south of the city, and the page on catering in Sabaneta covers the delivery times for that zone. City apartments and salones sociales are just as easy, with the same menus.
Hosts with a house full of cousins over the long weekend can pair Easter with our family gathering catering, which keeps one menu plan running from Thursday to Sunday without anyone stuck in the kitchen.
Holy Week Traditions and Menus
During Holy Week many Colombian Catholics avoid red meat, especially on Good Friday, so the traditional table is built on fish, rice, plantain and sweets. Holy Thursday and Good Friday are national holidays, and the meal after the processions is a family event in its own right.
Viudo de pescado is the classic: river fish such as bocachico steamed with yuca, plantain, potato and hogao, often in plantain leaves, a dish carried up from the towns along the Magdalena River. Bocachico has many fine bones that locals handle without thinking and visitors often do not, so we serve it whole for traditional tables and offer boned tilapia fillets for mixed groups.
The rest of the menu stays in the same spirit. We fry mojarra (tilapia) and serve it with patacones, coconut rice and avocado salad, or bake corvina fillets in coconut sauce, and close the meal with the sweets of the season: dulce de papaya in panela syrup, dulce de brevas with fresh cheese and creamy arroz con leche.
Easter Sunday Brunch
Easter Sunday brunch is the meal most expat families ask us for, and it works best as a buffet served from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. The menu mixes the Easter classics with a few Colombian breads and fruits.
- Honey-glazed ham, sliced at the table, with two mustards
- Deviled eggs and a spinach and cheese frittata
- Hot cross buns, butter croissants, pandebono and almojábanas
- Smoked salmon on toasted rye with cream cheese and capers
- Mango, pineapple, papaya and granadilla, cut that morning
- Fresh orange, lulo and passion fruit juices, plus tinto and hot chocolate
Pandebono and almojábanas are Colombian cheese breads, and they tend to disappear before the croissants. For a lighter or larger version of this spread, our brunch catering menu has more options, and Easter Sunday events run as normal even though our office is closed that day, so we settle the final details by Saturday.
Kids' Easter Egg Hunt Treats
We supply chocolate eggs, filled plastic eggs and a snack station for garden egg hunts, timed so the chocolate stays firm. Medellín afternoons often pass 27 °C, and solid chocolate starts to soften in direct sun in under half an hour.
To avoid a sticky mess, eggs travel in a cooler and are hidden no more than 15 minutes before the hunt. For gardens in full sun, we fill plastic eggs with wrapped candies, stickers and small toys, which survive any weather.
After the hunt, a snack station keeps the kids busy: bunny-shaped sandwiches, fruit skewers, carrot sticks with a yogurt dip, mini cupcakes and juice boxes. Every tray on the kids' menu is labeled for nuts, milk and gluten.
Holy Week Logistics
Holy Week empties Medellín: many families leave on the Wednesday afternoon for fincas in the Oriente, Santa Fe de Antioquia or the southwest, and return on Easter Sunday. Highways and the tunnel to the Oriente are at their busiest on those two days, and many small shops in country towns close or run short hours.
That is why our Holy Week cutoff is earlier than usual: orders for Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday close 7 days before delivery, instead of our normal 48 hours for drop-off. We schedule finca deliveries before the outbound rush on Wednesday or early on Thursday morning.
For a long finca weekend, we pack later meals in labeled, oven-ready trays with reheating notes, and they travel chilled below 5 °C in our refrigerated van. A Thursday delivery can then cover Thursday dinner and Friday lunch without anyone driving back to a supermarket.
Questions and answers
Easter FAQs
Do you offer meat-free Good Friday menus?
Yes, every Holy Week menu we offer can be made completely meat-free. The favorites are viudo de bocachico, fried mojarra with patacones and coconut rice, corvina in coconut sauce and a vegetable sancocho for guests who skip fish too. Fish dishes are prepared on separate boards and labeled for allergens.
Can you deliver to a finca during Holy Week?
Yes, drop-off delivery reaches fincas in Envigado, Itagüí, Sabaneta, La Estrella, Bello, Copacabana and Caldas. Fincas in Llanogrande, Rionegro, La Ceja, Guatapé and Santa Fe de Antioquia are served only as staffed events, quoted with the travel time included. Holy Week orders close 7 days before delivery.
Reserve your date
Plan Your Easter Table
Tell us which day of Holy Week you are hosting, how many guests and where, and we will send an itemized quote within 24 hours. You can also email info@medellincatering.com.
- Itemized quotes available
- Menus, staff, tableware, setup and cleanup in one quote
- Food-handler certified team and labeled allergens on every tray
- Monday to Saturday
- 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
- Sunday
- Closed (events still run)