Ms. Marquez-Hass, 51, peered over her fashionable tortoiseshell glasses and smiled, but she had heard it before. Since she and her husband, Larry, opened one of the few full-fledged Colombian restaurants in Manhattan, Dulce Vida has helped fill a culinary void on this Upper East Side stretch. The cafe has also become just what its name promises: a comfortable place where locals and tourists, many from Latin America, savor the sweet life over steaming sancocho stew, copious bandeja Paisa platters, chicken ropa vieja and beef empanadas.
The day begins at Dulce Vida with dark and nutty Colombian coffee, corn cakes called arepas oozing luscious cheese, tropical fruit juices like lulo and soursop, and thick changua soup, loaded with milk and egg — a well-tested Latin American hangover remedy.
"Last week," Ms. Marquez-Hass said, "a man tasted my soup and then called his mom in Colombia to announce he'd finally found one that compared to hers."
Diners can watch the action on Lexington or stare at a giant poster of La Candelaria, the cobblestone old town of Bogotá, plastered on a floor-to-ceiling column that frames the stairwell to the basement kitchen. Depending on the time of day, Latin salsa or Spanish ballads mix with the multilingual buzz, but it's in the afternoon that Dulce Vida comes most alive, perhaps thanks to the wide array of pastries like buñuelos (fried dough) and chicharrón de guayaba y queso (guava and cheese puffs). Many of the sweets, like the pan de yucca, are made with cassava or corn flour and are naturally gluten free.
There was nothing predestined in Ms. Marquez-Hass's career plan. Born in Bogotá, she moved to New York in 1985 and ran a beauty salon on East 80th Street with her sister. "We couldn't find any Colombian food, so we compiled my mother's recipes and opened a cafe," she said while sitting at the back corner table where she keeps a keen eye on the dining room. "And now, Mama stops by every week to make sure the food is up to her standard!"
Planted above the Lexington Avenue subway line, Dulce Vida attracts expatriates from across the city. "I heard about Dulce Vida from my brother," said Tatiana Rodriguez, a Colombian national who works in the music industry. "My family lives in Miami, so this food makes me feel I'm home."
Another regular customer, Joaquina F. Echeverri, hails from Mexico. "Everything in this place feels good," she said. "That's why I'm here."
On a recent Sunday, Jairo Rodriguez (no relation to Tatiana) brought a three-generation party of 17 family members to celebrate his aunt Lili's 80th birthday. "We had my three aunts, Tía Lili, Tía Elisa and Tía Berta, and we could have gone anywhere," he remembered. "But since the cafe served traditional Colombian food — meaning heavy on meat — in the middle of Manhattan, it was perfect."
Over and over, the waiters and waitresses explain the menu to attentive diners, who are eager to try something new. But when asked what goes into the bright green and tangy aji sauce, Ms. Marquez-Hass demurred. She looked over her glasses and grinned: "That's a family secret."
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