Leonor Espinosa is the Colombian chef-owner of Leo in Bogotá, the tasting-menu restaurant that has, since opening in 2007, become the global reference point for contemporary Colombian cuisine. Born in Cartago in southwestern Colombia and raised in Cartagena, Espinosa studied economics and fine arts before entering kitchens entirely self-taught. She is one of the few world-class chefs with no formal culinary training. Her daughter, Laura Hernández Espinosa, is Leo’s sommelier and co-leader of the Fundación Leo Espinosa.
The World’s 50 Best Restaurants named Espinosa The World’s Best Female Chef 2022 at the London ceremony, and Leo has been on Latin America’s 50 Best list consistently for the past decade, ranked No. 23 in 2025. She won the Basque Culinary World Prize 2017 for her work through the FUNLEO foundation with Colombian indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. Leo relocated to a new two-story space in the Chapinero neighbourhood in June 2021 and in 2025 celebrates its 20th anniversary since Espinosa first opened a restaurant under her own name.
TL;DR
- Colombian chef born in Cartago, Valle del Cauca, southwestern Colombia
- Chef-owner of Leo in Bogotá (opened 2007; relocated to Chapinero June 2021)
- The World’s Best Female Chef 2022 (The World’s 50 Best Restaurants)
- Basque Culinary World Prize 2017 for community work through FUNLEO foundation
- Entirely self-taught; former economist and fine-art graduate
Leonor Espinosa key facts
| Born | Cartago, Valle del Cauca, Colombia; raised in Cartagena |
| Full name | Leonor Espinosa De La Ossa (known as Leo) |
| Nationality | Colombian |
| Main restaurant | Leo, Calle 65 Bis #4-23, Chapinero, Bogotá (opened 2007; relocated 2021) |
| Style | Contemporary Colombian; ethnobotanical research; ingredients from all six Colombian biomes |
| Notable awards | World’s Best Female Chef 2022; Basque Culinary World Prize 2017; Latin America’s Best Female Chef 2017 |
| Other ventures | Misia (casual restaurant, Bogotá); Fundación Leo Espinosa (FUNLEO) since 2008 |
Early life and training of Leonor Espinosa
Espinosa was born in Cartago, a small town in the Valle del Cauca department in southwestern Colombia, and spent most of her youth in Cartagena on the Caribbean coast. She studied economics and fine arts in Cartagena, and began her professional career in marketing and advertising rather than cookery. Her training is unusual for a chef at her level: entirely self-taught, with no culinary school, no professional apprenticeship, and no staging period in Europe or North America.
The switch to cooking came in her late thirties. She spent years travelling the Colombian regions as part of her marketing work, and increasingly found herself interested in the food and agricultural knowledge of rural Afro-descendant, indigenous and peasant communities. The economist’s approach to research and the artist’s eye for composition became the foundation of her eventual cooking style: ingredient-led, ethnobotanical, and structured around Colombia’s six recognised biomes (Great Colombian Caribbean, Colombian Pacific, Eastern Colombian Andes, Western Colombian Andes, Colombian Massif and Colombian Amazon-Orinoco).
She opened her first Leo Cocina y Cava in 2007 in downtown Bogotá at the Centro Internacional. The restaurant received international attention almost immediately. In 2007, Condé Nast Traveller named it among the 100 best restaurants in the world. She has consistently said that her approach is to vindicate Colombian gastronomic traditions through the country’s natural, cultural and intangible heritage, and that her foundation work extends that argument beyond the restaurant.
Leonor Espinosa career timeline
- Childhood: Born in Cartago, Valle del Cauca; raised in Cartagena
- 1980s-1990s: Studies economics and fine arts in Cartagena; begins career in marketing and advertising
- Early 2000s: Begins working in cookery; travels extensively across Colombian regions
- 2007: Opens Leo Cocina y Cava at Centro Internacional, Bogotá; Condé Nast Traveller names it among the 100 best restaurants in the world
- 2008: Founds Fundación Leo Espinosa (FUNLEO)
- 2014-2015: Leo named Best Restaurant in Colombia
- 2017: Named Latin America’s Best Female Chef at Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants
- 2017: Awarded the Basque Culinary World Prize for her community work through FUNLEO
- 2018: Leo ranked No. 10 at Latin America’s 50 Best; featured on TIME Magazine’s 100 Greatest Places 2018
- 2019: Leo enters The World’s 50 Best Restaurants extended list at No. 99; becomes the first Colombian restaurant ever on the list
- June 2021: Leo reopens in a new two-story space in the Chapinero neighbourhood
- 2022: Named The World’s Best Female Chef by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants
- 2024: Laura Hernández Espinosa wins Beronia Latin America’s Best Sommelier Award
- 2025: Leo ranked No. 23 on Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants; 20th anniversary commemorative lunch menu launched
Leonor Espinosa signature style: CICLOBIOMA and biome-led Colombia
Leo’s current gastronomic concept is called CICLOBIOMA, which Espinosa describes as a cycle connecting human beings, cultural heritage and the natural environment through Colombian cuisine. The tasting menu (available in five, eight or twelve courses) is structured as a sensory tour through Colombia’s six biomes. Each course draws on rare or underused ingredients from one of these regions and places them in dialogue with the traditions of the local community that cultivates or harvests them.
The menu rotates through ingredients most international diners have never encountered: arowana (a giant Amazonian fish), sour cassava, mojojoy (Amazonian palm larvae), coquindo oil (from a rare Amazonian seed), corozo (a Caribbean palm fruit), bijao leaves (used for cooking and wrapping), culona ants (the famous Santandereano fried ants), melipona honey from stingless Amazonian bees, wild cabbage from the Colombian Massif, and trout from the Andes. Many ingredients come directly from FUNLEO-supported community producers, which means the restaurant’s supply chain is also a development programme.
The dining room is divided across two floors. La Sala de Leo on the ground floor is the research-and-tasting-menu room. La Sala de Laura, upstairs, is Laura Hernández Espinosa’s space, with a simpler menu and a heavy focus on Colombian distillates, fermented drinks, and unusual wines. Laura has named her house line of Colombian spirits Territorio. In 2024 she won Latin America’s Best Sommelier Award, and her bar is ranked No. 68 on The World’s 50 Best Bars 2025 extended list.
Notable dishes at Leo
Several Leo dishes have become reference points in contemporary Latin American cuisine. The albacore with culona ants (Santandereano fried ants alongside line-caught tuna) is the restaurant’s most photographed opening course. The dried prawn, Caribbean crown conch, coconut and azotea herbs plate captures the Pacific and Caribbean in a single bite. The cashew, eucalyptus, white yuca and green pepper ball (eaten in one mouthful with strands of pimienta verde on the side) is a technically complex signature. The sour-yucca arowana is the headline Amazonian dish. The calf’s foot jelly with coquindo oil is the Colombian Amazon in a single preparation. And the commemorative 20th anniversary lunch menu, launched in 2025, revisits early dishes from the first Leo Cocina y Cava of 2007.
Leonor Espinosa awards and recognition
- 2007: Leo Cocina y Cava among Condé Nast Traveller’s 100 best restaurants in the world
- 2014-2015: Best Restaurant in Colombia
- 2017: Latin America’s Best Female Chef (Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants)
- 2017: Basque Culinary World Prize for community work through FUNLEO
- 2018: Leo ranked No. 10 on Latin America’s 50 Best
- 2018: TIME Magazine’s 100 Greatest Places 2018
- 2019: First Colombian restaurant on The World’s 50 Best extended list (No. 99)
- 2022: The World’s Best Female Chef (The World’s 50 Best Restaurants)
- 2025: Leo ranked No. 23 on Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants
Leonor Espinosa impact on Latin American cuisine
Espinosa’s most concrete contribution is putting Colombian cuisine on the global fine-dining map. Before Leo’s 2019 entry into The World’s 50 Best extended list, no Colombian restaurant had ever appeared on that list. Before her 2022 World’s Best Female Chef award, the country had never produced a chef at the top of any global ranking. Her argument has been consistent: Colombia’s biodiversity is second only to Brazil’s, and the country’s cuisine has always been undervalued internationally relative to its depth.
The second contribution is the FUNLEO foundation’s work linking haute cuisine with rural community development. Since 2008, FUNLEO has worked with indigenous and Afro-descendant communities across Colombia, most notably in Coquí, Chocó, on the Pacific coast. The Basque Culinary World Prize 2017 recognised precisely this work: using gastronomy as an engine of social and economic development rather than as a closed luxury category. The Leo supply chain draws directly from FUNLEO-supported producers, which means the commercial operation sustains the community work.
Within the current Latin American generation she sits alongside Alex Atala at D.O.M. in São Paulo, Helena Rizzo at Maní (also in São Paulo), and the Central generation of Peruvian chefs in Lima. Her biome-led approach is part of the same Latin American terroir argument that has moved Brazilian, Mexican and Peruvian cuisine onto the global stage over the last fifteen years. Jorge Vallejo at Quintonil in Mexico City and the Amazonian chef generation in Brazil are her closest peers in the ethnobotanical register.
Leonor Espinosa FAQ
Where is Leo?
At Calle 65 Bis #4-23 in the Chapinero neighbourhood of Bogotá. Leo moved to this two-story space in June 2021, after opening as Leo Cocina y Cava at the Centro Internacional in downtown Bogotá in 2007. The new location has two dining rooms: La Sala de Leo on the ground floor and La Sala de Laura (overseen by sommelier Laura Hernández Espinosa) upstairs.
Does Leo have a Michelin star?
Michelin does not currently publish a guide for Colombia, so Leo cannot be Michelin-rated. The Michelin Guide Mexico covers neighbouring Latin American coverage but Colombia is not yet included. Leo is ranked instead through Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants (No. 23 in 2025) and has appeared on The World’s 50 Best extended list since 2019.
Is Leonor Espinosa self-taught?
Yes. She has no culinary school training and no restaurant apprenticeship. She studied economics and fine arts in Cartagena and worked in marketing and advertising before entering the kitchen in her thirties. She has said her research-driven, ethnobotanical approach to Colombian ingredients comes directly from her economist’s training and her artist’s eye.
What is FUNLEO?
Fundación Leo Espinosa, the non-profit foundation Espinosa founded in 2008 with her daughter Laura Hernández Espinosa. FUNLEO works with indigenous and Afro-descendant communities across Colombia, most notably in Coquí, Chocó on the Pacific coast, using gastronomy as an engine of social and economic development. The foundation’s work earned Espinosa the Basque Culinary World Prize 2017.
What is CICLOBIOMA?
Leo’s current gastronomic concept, introduced in recent menus. CICLOBIOMA is a cycle that connects human beings, cultural heritage and the natural environment through Colombian cuisine. The tasting menu is structured as a journey through Colombia’s six biomes, with each course drawing on rare ingredients from a particular region and the community that cultivates them.
What is next for Leonor Espinosa
2025-2026 marks Leo’s 20th anniversary. The commemorative lunch menu revisiting early dishes will run through the anniversary year, alongside the continuing CICLOBIOMA tasting-menu programme. Espinosa continues to lead FUNLEO with her daughter Laura, whose La Sala de Laura bar reached the World’s 50 Best Bars 2025 extended list. She also runs Misia, her more casual Bogotá restaurant. Her public Instagram (@leoespinosach) is the best source for current menu updates.
