Ecuadorian food changes with altitude more than with anything else. In the Andes, potatoes, corn and pork fill the plate; on the Pacific coast, green plantain, shrimp and coconut; in the Amazon, fish wrapped in leaves and cooked over coals.
Travelers ask for one dish. Ecuador answers by region. The closest thing to an official answer is encebollado: in July 2024 Ecuador’s Minister of Culture declared Guayaquil’s encebollado part of the country’s intangible heritage. It is a soup of albacore tuna, yuca (cassava) and red onion pickled in lemon, finished with fresh herbs and eaten with chifles (thin fried green-plantain chips), toasted corn or bread. Its nickname is levanta muertos, “raise the dead”, for its fame as a hangover cure.
Locro de papa is the Sierra’s classic soup: potatoes cooked with fresh cheese and cream, colored with achiote and served with avocado. Llapingachos take their name from Kichwa, llapin (crushed) and gacho (fried): patties of mashed potato and cheese, fried until crisp. In Ambato they come with a fried egg, chorizo, avocado, lettuce and a pickle of onion and tomato, and without the peanut sauce you will often see elsewhere. Ambato is firm about that.
Pork leads two of the best-known plates. Hornado is pork marinated and roasted in a wood-fired oven, served with potato tortillas, crisp skin and agrio, a sweet-sour pickle of onion and tomato. Fritada is fried pork, with potatoes, corn, pickled vegetables and fried plantain. For a snack in Quito, order empanadas de viento (“wind empanadas”), filled with cheese and fried fast so they puff up.
Then there is cuy, roasted guinea pig. Yes, really. It is not a stunt for visitors. In the Andes cuy is food for an occasion, served at weddings and community festivals and tied to planting, harvest and celebrations such as Inti Raymi, San Pedro y San Pablo and Yamor. You do not have to try it. If you are curious, order it roasted, cuy asado, and treat it as a feast dish, not a dare.
Ceviche on the coast is not Peru’s. Ecuadorian ceviche, often shrimp or other shellfish, marinates longer, takes a tomato sauce that turns it reddish and arrives soupy in its own juice, with chifles or popcorn on the side. Peru keeps its leche de tigre, sweet potato and big-kernel corn. Have both, and do not tell either country which you liked better.
Breakfast on the coast is often a bolón de verde: green plantain mashed with cheese, chicharrón (crisp pork) or both, shaped into a ball and eaten with black coffee. Seco de chivo is goat stewed slowly in chicha or beer with naranjilla and panela (unrefined cane sugar), served with yellow rice, fried plantain and avocado. In Esmeraldas, on the northern coast, the dish is encocado: snapper or corvina stewed in coconut milk with chillangua, a wild cilantro of that coast, with white rice and patacones (fried green plantain) alongside.
East of the Andes, yuca is central to the table. The dish to look for is maito, an old Amazon way of cooking: fish such as tilapia or catfish folded into bijao leaves, cooked over coals and opened at the table. In Napo it comes with boiled yuca and a cold glass of guayusa, an infusion of a local leaf. In Kichwa communities in Napo, chicha de yuca, a fermented cassava drink, is offered to travelers as a gesture of hospitality. Accept it, even if you only sip. For lodge meals, see our Amazon rainforest food guide.
| Region | Look for | Drink with it |
|---|---|---|
| Sierra (Quito, Ambato) | Locro de papa, llapingachos, hornado, fritada, cuy, empanadas de viento | Canelazo; colada morada in November |
| Coast (Guayaquil) | Encebollado, ceviche, bolón de verde, seco de chivo | Black coffee, fresh juice |
| Esmeraldas | Encocado with rice and patacones | Fresh juice |
| Amazon (Napo) | Maito with boiled yuca | Guayusa, chicha de yuca |
Most Ecuadorians eat breakfast at home. On the coast it is green plantain, as bolón or patacones, or filled empanadas, with black coffee or juice. In the Sierra it leans to corn and potato: mote pillo, a corn dish, llapingachos or a tamal lojano from Loja. In the Amazon, yuca, the palm fruit chontaduro and guayusa start the day. In the cities it is lighter: bread, café con leche and a fresh juice.
The heat is your choice. It sits in a bowl on the table: ají, a fresh chili salsa (uchu in Kichwa) that each diner adds to taste. The classic is ají de tomate de árbol, made with tree tomato. Try a little before you try a spoonful.
During Holy Week, and above all on Good Friday when Catholics skip meat, Ecuador eats fanesca, a soup of tender grains and beans with squash, salt cod and mote. The grains are said to stand for the twelve apostles and the fish for Jesus. The roots are pre-Hispanic: Andean harvest festivals around 21 March were marked with a stew of young grains called uchucuta.
Around 2 November, Día de los Difuntos (the Day of the Dead), the drink is colada morada: purple-corn flour cooked with a purée of mortiño, blackberry and naranjilla, pieces of pineapple, babaco and strawberry, and spiced with cinnamon, cloves and ishpingo. It comes with guaguas de pan, bread dolls often filled with chocolate or dulce de leche. Our best time to visit Ecuador guide has the dates.
Much of Ecuador’s most unusual fruit grows in the Andes. Look for naranjilla, made into juice, ice cream and jam; tomate de árbol (tree tomato); granadilla, eaten fresh for its seed-filled pulp; taxo, a juice and dessert fruit; uvilla (golden berry); and guanábana (soursop). Passion fruit (maracuyá) and blackberry (mora) round out the juice list. Ask for a jugo natural, a fresh juice; mora con guanábana, blackberry with soursop, is a good start.
Chocolate may have started here. In 2018, archaeologists published evidence of cacao use at Santa Ana-La Florida in southeastern Ecuador, a site of the Mayo-Chinchipe culture, starting 5,300 years ago.
Ecuador still grows two main kinds, and the difference matters. Its traditional fine-aroma cacao, known at home as nacional, has been exported since colonial times, and the International Cocoa Organization classes 75% of Ecuador’s cocoa exports as fine or flavour cocoa. The other is CCN-51, bred in Ecuador in 1965 by the agronomist Homero Castro: faster-growing and tougher against pests, but rougher and fattier in flavor.
Ecuador grows serious coffee. In the 2023 Taza Dorada competition, the best arabica came from Loja, Pichincha and Carchi. Yes, but: at home, instant still wins. On one delivery platform, instant coffee made up more than half of all coffee orders between January and August 2026. Specialty cafés are growing in number, so ask whether the coffee is brewed.
Quito’s own drink is canelazo: water boiled with sugar or panela and cinnamon, often with naranjilla, and a shot of aguardiente (cane spirit) added at the end. It is served hot, all year, and at its peak during the Fiestas de Quito in December.
The CDC advises safe food and water habits in Ecuador and suggests considering a typhoid vaccine for rural areas with poor sanitation, stays of a month or more, or visits to friends and relatives. Our Ecuador health page covers the rest.
In higher-category restaurants, bars and hotels, a 10% charge on the bill goes to the staff under a 2006 Labor Ministry rule. Our Ecuador money guide covers tipping beyond that.
Plan meals like sights: a highland day for hornado and llapingachos, a coastal stop for encebollado, maito in the Amazon, fanesca if you travel in Holy Week. Browse our Quito tours and Cuenca tours, or the Quito, Cuenca and Avenue of the Volcanoes itinerary through the highlands. For meals on a Galápagos cruise, see our Galápagos food guide. Start with Ecuador, or ask us to design a custom Ecuador trip that gives the table as much time as the sights.
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