New York's mayor Zohran Mamdani stopped by Seba Seba Bakery in Jackson Heights, Queens, and walked out with a new favourite snack: pandebono, the cheesy Colombian bread he described as "incredible". The visit, picked up quickly by Colombian users online, put a spotlight on one of the city's most established Colombian bakeries and the neighbourhood that surrounds it.
Seba Seba has been a fixture since 1987, when Colombian brothers Luis and Rubén Velázquez founded it. They arrived in the United States facing the kind of start most migrants know well — tight money and limited English — and still built a business that has anchored the local Colombian food scene for nearly four decades. When content creator Chinita Paisa explained the word "berraco" to Mamdani during the visit, a Colombian term for someone hardworking and resilient, the mayor said the Velázquez brothers were the best example of it he could think of.
The bakery's name has its own charm. "Seba Seba" reportedly describes the feeling of eating something so good you want to keep going — a fitting label for a place that draws Colombians and other Queens locals as a gathering spot, not just a shop.
So what did the mayor actually eat? Pandebono is a cheese bread rooted in Colombia's Valle del Cauca region, made with cassava starch, corn, cheese and eggs, giving it a soft texture and a savoury-sweet flavour. It's a breakfast staple and everyday snack across Colombia, and it travels well — you'll find it wherever Colombian communities settle, Queens included. Alongside it, Mamdani tried agua de panela, a drink made by dissolving panela, an unrefined cane sugar, in hot or cold water, sometimes with lime. Both are everyday comforts in Colombia rather than restaurant novelties, which is exactly why finding them done properly abroad matters to the diaspora.
For travellers, the story is a useful nudge: Jackson Heights is one of New York's best eating neighbourhoods, and its Colombian bakeries are a cheap, delicious entry point. A pandebono and a hot agua de panela will cost you a few dollars, and the area around Roosevelt Avenue stacks Colombian, Ecuadorian, Mexican and Peruvian food within a few blocks. If a city's mayor is making unscheduled stops at a bakery, that's usually a good sign the locals already knew what they had.
Why it matters: food-led neighbourhood walks are one of the most rewarding ways to explore New York beyond Manhattan, and this visit puts a mainstream spotlight on a bakery that has quietly done its thing since the late 1980s. Go hungry, order the pandebono warm if you can, and take a few minutes to hear the owners' story — it's part of what you're tasting.
