A restaurant built entirely around a single starchy fruit just opened its second Utah storefront. Steven Rodriguez, who runs Oh! My Plantain, opened a Riverton location on August 26, 2026, inside a standalone food court at Mountain View Mall, expanding beyond his original South Salt Lake shop where the concept launched in November 2025.
From Bogota to a Menu Built on One Fruit
Rodriguez, who is originally from Bogota, Colombia, told KSL News that he created Oh! My Plantain because no restaurant in Utah was 100% dedicated to plantains. He said plantains are a regular part of the daily diet in Colombia, and his own family still eats them almost every day in different ways as a side dish. Before launching the concept, Rodriguez had worked as a food-industry cook and had prepared Mexican, American and Central American food, according to the same report.
Plantains resemble bananas but are more starchy and less sweet, and while bananas can be eaten raw, plantains are typically prepared by boiling, baking or frying, per the report. Botanically, a plantain is regarded as a fruit, and Rodriguez imports all of his from Colombia — two varieties in total — along with the fruits used in the restaurant's juices, the article notes.
Patacónes, Marranitas and a Lasagna With No Pasta
The menu leans heavily on dishes built from plantain dough, which the restaurant prepares in-house by shaping and then frying or cooking it, per the same account. Among the best sellers are patacónes, a plantain base topped with customer-selected ingredients such as protein, guacamole, corn and quail eggs. The kitchen also turns out marranitas, fried balls of plantain dough with a filling in the center, plantain burgers that use buns made of plantain dough instead of bread, and a plantain lasagna with layers of specially prepared plantain standing in for pasta.
Oh! My Plantain makes all of its sauces in-house, and its dishes are based on traditional Colombian recipes, the report states. Rodriguez said many people try the food out of curiosity and end up becoming regular customers, drawing from both Venezuelan and Colombian communities as well as diners simply looking to try something new.
A Bigger Appetite for Colombian Plantains
The timing lines up with a broader shift in trade and demographics that has quietly built a customer base for a shop like this. Plantains are considered a key food in the Colombian diet, per Bancolombia, and the country ranks among the world's top producers and consumers of the crop, according to the Plantain Council and HarvestPlus. Colombia is one of the world's leading plantain growers overall, harvesting more than 2.3 million metric tons annually according to global agricultural data compiled by Blue Marble Citizen.
That supply has been flowing into the United States at a growing clip. During the 2024–2025 shipping season through late April 2025, the U.S. imported more than 71.7 million pounds of plantains by boat directly from Colombia, according to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service. Between 2023 and 2024, the U.S. became the fastest-growing export destination for Colombian fresh and dried plantains, with trade expanding by $19.2 million, per figures compiled by the Observatory of Economic Complexity. That growth sits inside a much larger agricultural relationship: bilateral agricultural trade between the U.S. and Colombia topped $8.9 billion in 2024, with Colombian agricultural exports to the U.S. rising 8 percent to $4.4 billion under the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement, according to the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service.
Why Riverton, and Why Now
Locally, the demographic case for a plantain-focused restaurant is straightforward. Salt Lake County has the largest Hispanic population in Utah, with more than 200,000 Hispanic or Latino residents making up roughly 18% of the county's total population, according to the University of Utah's Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. In South Salt Lake, where Rodriguez opened his first location, Hispanic or Latino residents make up 27.8% of the municipal population, per U.S. Census Bureau data. Utah's Venezuelan population has also quadrupled between 2010 and 2020, adding nearly 7,700 residents to become the fastest-growing Hispanic group in the state, according to the Gardner Institute.
For the second location, Rodriguez chose Mountain View Village, an 85-acre, 1-million-square-foot master-planned retail and dining development in Riverton operated by CenterCal Properties that features more than 30 food and dining establishments. Rodriguez, who now operates two Oh! My Plantain restaurants, said he is optimistic about the Riverton location. Plantains remain a key part of Colombian agriculture, and June is celebrated as World Plantain Day, a nod to the fruit's cultural weight that Rodriguez has built an entire restaurant concept around.
