The front door opens onto a spacious Bogotá apartment overlooking a tree-lined street in La Cabrera. There is no maître d’ waiting behind a podium, no hostess stand, no reservations book resting beside an espresso machine. Instead, Claudia Cepeda welcomes each guest personally, offering an aperitif before inviting them to settle into the living room. Some arrive alone, others in pairs. They exchange tentative smiles and polite conversation, unaware that over the next three hours they will share far more than an carefully-curated meal.
For Cepeda, this is hospitality at its purest. Her home is neither a restaurant nor a private club, but a place where conversation matters as much as cuisine.
Her latest culinary venture, Seis y Seis, is built on a deceptively simple idea: twelve people who may never have met before share an evening of thoughtful conversation over a menu prepared by a chef whose culinary education spans New York’s demanding restaurant kitchens and Colombia’s rich regional traditions.
The result is something between a private dinner party and a fine-dining restaurant, yet without the formality or anonymity that often accompanies either.
“I wanted people to reconnect around a table,” Cepeda explains. “Cooking has always been about much more than food.” That philosophy began long before she ever stepped inside a professional kitchen.
An economist educated at the Universidad de los Andes and later at the London School of Economics, Cepeda initially built a career in development, working with Colombia’s National Development Agency and the Colombian Coffee Federation before moving to New York with her husband and young daughter.
There she worked on fundraising initiatives with non-governmental organisations, including the Salvation Army. In the days and months following the September 11 attacks, she volunteered in soup kitchens serving Lower Manhattan.
Watching thousands of meals prepared not for luxury but for comfort transformed her understanding of what cooking could accomplish. “I realised cooking had a social purpose.”
The idea was hardly foreign. Growing up in Bogotá, family meals were treated almost ceremonially. “My father believed cooking had to transcend the kitchen,” she recalls. “Everything mattered – from setting the table to choosing the utensils used to prepare each meal.”
Eventually, she abandoned the boardroom for the cutting board.
Cepeda enrolled in culinary courses at the New School before earning professional training at the French Culinary Institute in SoHo, where she worked in the school’s restaurant and catering kitchens.
From there she entered New York’s fiercely competitive restaurant scene, becoming the first female chef at the Manhattan Ocean Club, one of Midtown’s celebrated seafood institutions. The experience exposed her to every aspect of professional gastronomy—from sourcing ingredients and managing kitchen brigades to understanding how service, wine and hospitality combine to create memorable dining experiences.
She later joined CORE: Club on Fifth Avenue, the invitation-only private club created by celebrated American chef Tom Colicchio. Rising to Executive Sous Chef, she spent four years preparing meals for New York’s financial, corporate and cultural powerbrokers before deciding that it was time to return home.
Back in Bogotá in 2008, Cepeda devoted herself to consulting projects that ranged from preserving ancestral Colombian recipes in Norte de Santander to redesigning menus for the Movich hotel group and teaching future chefs at La Salle College. Sustainability, local ingredients and regional food traditions became recurring themes throughout her work.
Yet it wasn’t until years later that the idea behind Seis y Seis emerged almost accidentally.
Friends began asking her to cook intimate dinners in her home. Six invited six. Then friends brought friends. Soon entrepreneurs, advertising creatives, management executives, journalists and newcomers to Bogotá were gathering around the same table, many meeting for the first time.
Today, a seat at her table costs COP $190,000 and includes a welcome cocktail, carefully paired wines and a seasonal three-course menu designed to encourage conversation as much as appreciation for the food itself. On the evening we joined the table, conversation flowed almost as effortlessly as the wine.
Dinner opened with delicate ravioli filled with goat’s cheese, brightened by yellow lemon, pink peppercorns and tarragon. It was paired with crisp Chilean Sauvignon Blancs from Morandé and Pionero Reserva, whose citrus notes echoed the freshness of the starter.
The second course featured semi-cured salmon served over a vibrant cilantro and jalapeño sauce with crisp carrot and beetroot, before giving way to the evening’s centrepiece: duck confit scented with garam masala, sweet paprika, plums, rosé wine and balsamic vinegar. Roasted asparagus finished with lemon zest accompanied by silky sweet potato purée enriched with butter and cream.
A Chilean Doña Dominga Syrah, layered with ripe plum and red berry aromas, complemented the richness of the duck.
Dessert arrived as a panna cotta combining cream and Greek yoghurt with basil, lemon and raspberries, a light finish after an evening that had become as much about conversation as cuisine.
By the end of the night, business cards had been exchanged, friendships formed and plans made for future meetings. That may be the greatest achievement of Seis y Seis.
Around the world, supper clubs have become an increasingly popular alternative to traditional restaurants, blending the intimacy of home hospitality with professional gastronomy. In Bogotá, Cepeda has adapted the concept into something uniquely Colombian: a place where carefully prepared food serves as the catalyst for conversation, connection and community.
For newcomers to the capital, seasoned food lovers or simply those curious enough to spend an evening dining with strangers, Seis y Seis offers something that cannot be listed on a menu. It offers a seat at someone else’s table – and, by the end of the evening, the feeling that it might also be your own.
To participate in a fine dining experience contact Seis y Seis on IG: @6yseis
