Menus & Cuisines
Medellin Elite Catering cooks breakfast for people who start early: teams with an 8:00 a.m. training, families sharing a rented villa, wedding parties getting ready and friends planning a birthday surprise. Since 2019 we have served these mornings across Medellín and the Aburrá Valley, from a tray of arepas for a dozen colleagues to a breakfast buffet for several hundred conference delegates.
Our breakfast menus mix the Colombian table with the continental one. Visitors usually want to try a real paisa breakfast at least once, and on the other mornings they want good coffee, fresh fruit and something light.
Breakfast is unforgiving about timing, because eggs and arepas lose their charm within minutes and nobody forgives late coffee. Our kitchen starts before dawn, and the food travels in insulated Cambro carriers that hold it above 60 °C until it is served.
Plan your event
We cater four kinds of breakfast: family and group breakfasts at home, daily breakfasts for groups staying in villas or hotels, early breakfasts before events such as weddings or tours, and surprise breakfasts delivered as a gift. Each one comes from the same kitchen, but the packaging, timing and staffing differ.
Drop-off breakfasts arrive ready to set out, with compostable plates and cutlery, hot dishes in insulated carriers and coffee in pump airpots that stay hot for about 3 hours. Staffed breakfasts, from 15 guests, add a cook at a griddle for fresh arepas and eggs, plus servers who clear plates and keep the coffee coming.
On a wedding morning, a breakfast sent to the getting-ready suite keeps the couple and their families fed before the photographer arrives. We also pack early breakfasts for groups leaving on day trips, wrapped so they can be eaten on the bus.
A traditional Colombian breakfast is hearty: eggs, an arepa, something fried or reheated from the night before and a hot drink, often chocolate with cheese. In Antioquia it is meant to carry you through to a late lunch.
Calentado means "reheated": rice and red beans from the day before, fried together in a pan with hogao until the edges crisp. We serve it with a fried egg, a slice of chorizo or chicharrón, a small arepa and ripe plantain, in portions of about 250 g.
Ours is cooked fresh for the event rather than from leftovers, but the method is the one every paisa grandmother uses.
The Antioquian arepa is thin, white and almost plain, made from ground white corn and cooked on a griddle until it blisters. It comes with quesito antioqueño, a soft, fresh, lightly salted cheese, and a pat of butter melting on top.
At staffed breakfasts we cook arepas on site, because an arepa that waits 30 minutes turns rubbery. For drop-off orders we wrap them in cloth inside a warm carrier and send extra butter.
Huevos pericos are eggs scrambled with diced tomato and cebolla larga, the long green onion found in almost every Colombian kitchen. We cook them soft, about 2 eggs per guest, and replace the chafing dish with a fresh batch every 40 minutes.
Chocolate santafereño is hot chocolate made from tablets of cacao with cinnamon and clove, whisked with a wooden molinillo until it foams. The custom, which comes from Bogotá, is to drop cubes of fresh cheese into the cup and eat them softened with a spoon, alongside almojábanas or pandebono.
Coffee drinkers get tinto, the small, light black coffee Colombians drink all day, or a specialty service of single-origin beans from southwest Antioquia, from towns such as Jardín and Andes, brewed by pour-over or French press. Plan on 2 cups per guest across a two-hour breakfast.
A continental breakfast is the lighter option: pastries, bread, fruit, yogurt and coffee, with no hot cooking on site. It suits meetings, early flights and guests who never eat much before noon.
Our pastry board holds croissants, pandequeso, almojábanas, banana bread and whole-wheat rolls, with butter, mora (Andean blackberry) jam and guava paste. Fruit platters use whatever is ripest that week: papaya, mango, pineapple, granadilla, uchuva and watermelon, cut the same morning.
The healthy menu adds Greek yogurt with house granola, chia pudding with passion fruit, avocado toast on sourdough and egg white omelets with spinach and mushrooms. Each tray is labeled for gluten, dairy, nuts and eggs, and our gluten-free catering line can prepare a separate breakfast for guests with celiac disease.
Breakfast meetings work best when the food is easy to eat while talking and the coffee never runs out. We set up for board meetings, trainings, product launches and client breakfasts in offices from the Milla de Oro to the business parks of the south, and our catering in El Poblado covers most of the city's corporate towers.
A hot corporate breakfast is usually an individual plate: huevos pericos or a mushroom omelet, an arepa or toast, fruit and juice. A continental format, with a pastry board and fruit cups, works better when attendees trickle in over 30 minutes or the meeting starts while they eat.
For full-day trainings we combine breakfast with a mid-morning coffee break and lunch, and our corporate event catering team plans the whole day as one order. Every quote comes as an itemized document within 24 hours, which most procurement departments need before they approve a purchase order.
A surprise breakfast is a breakfast delivered to someone's door as a gift, usually for a birthday, an anniversary or a colleague's last day. In Medellín it has become a favorite way to celebrate, and it works just as well for a whole office as for a family.
Ours arrives on a tray or in a gift box with a thermos of coffee or hot chocolate, fresh juice, fruit, pastries, an arepa with quesito and a card with your message. Surprise breakfasts work best for a group: a family, a team at the office or friends sharing a villa, with one tray per person or a shared spread for the table.
Order at least 48 hours ahead and tell us how the building handles deliveries, because many residential towers in El Poblado and Envigado only let couriers up after the porter rings the apartment, which can spoil the surprise.
The table compares our four breakfast menus by what is served and the kind of morning each one suits.
| Menu | What is served | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Colombian | Calentado or huevos pericos, arepa with quesito, fruit, chocolate or tinto | Villas, family mornings, visitors |
| Continental | Pastries, bread, jam, fruit platter, juice, coffee | Meetings, early starts |
| Healthy | Yogurt and granola, chia pudding, egg white omelet, fruit, juice | Retreats, wellness groups |
| Brunch-style | Colombian and continental dishes plus a live egg or waffle station | Late mornings, celebrations |
Drop-off breakfasts reach Medellín, Envigado, Itagüí and Sabaneta, and staffed breakfasts include servers, setup and cleanup. For a late-morning menu with live stations and a mimosa bar, our brunch catering page has the details.
Questions and answers
Drop-off breakfasts arrive from 6:30 a.m., Monday to Saturday, when the order is confirmed 48 hours ahead. Staffed breakfasts can be served earlier, because our team arrives 2 to 3 hours before service, which is common before weddings, tours and early flights. Sunday breakfasts are possible for events, booked and confirmed by Saturday.
Yes, we can serve breakfast every morning of your stay. Groups of 15 or more can have a cook make arepas and eggs in the villa kitchen, while smaller groups get a daily drop-off ordered 48 hours ahead. For villas in Llanogrande or other towns outside the valley, we send a daily cook by quote, since drop-off delivery does not reach that far.
Reserve your date
Send us the date, the start time and the number of guests, and we will reply with a breakfast menu and an itemized quote within 24 hours. You can also write to info@medellincatering.com.