Paraguay’s traditional kitchen leans on three ingredients: corn, mandioca (cassava) and fresh cheese. Many of its dishes carry Guaraní names, and its best-loved drink is served ice cold. Paraguayans do share the region’s taste for empanadas and grilled meat, but the food worth traveling for is their own.
Sopa paraguaya surprises first-time visitors: a “soup” that arrives solid. Cornmeal, cheese, milk and eggs are baked into a dense, custardy cornbread, traditionally in a tatakuá, the Guaraní clay oven. The popular story says a cook in the kitchen of 19th-century president Carlos Antonio López put too much cornmeal in a soup and rescued it in the oven. The New York Times treats that tale as legend; Guaraní cooks were probably baking a similar corn bread long before.
Chipa is first on most lists, and with good reason. This small bread is made from almidón (cassava starch) with cheese, eggs, fat and a hint of anise, all worked into the dough rather than used as a filling. There are more than 70 types: some add corn flour, and chipa so’o hides a meat filling. Look for it at bakeries and at the chiperas de ruta, the chipa stops along the highways.
Chipa guasu is a moist, savory bake of fresh corn (choclo) and the side that usually sits next to the asado (barbecue). Mbejú is the griddle branch of the family, a flat cake of cassava starch and cheese cooked in a pan.
If you’re feeling a bit under the weather, or just want something to soothe the soul, vori vori (also spelled borí borí) is the answer: a warm chicken broth with onion, tomato and parsley, and small balls of cornmeal and queso (cheese) cooked in it. Pira caldo is a hearty fish soup made with river fish such as surubí, a catfish, plus onion, tomato and bell pepper, and it is often served with mandioca. For a meat version, look for so’o josopy, which most people shorten to soyo.
Sopa paraguaya is the dish usually described as the national one, and in 2017 the Secretaría Nacional de Cultura declared it national intangible heritage, together with vori vori and two hearty stews, locro and jopara. By law, though, the national food is chipa: Law 5267 of 2014 gives it that title and a day of its own, the second Friday of August. Tereré is the national drink under Law 4261 of 2011. In 2018 the intellectual-property office, DINAPI, went further and listed 51 dishes as culinary heritage, every dish above among them.
Mandioca holds the table together. Paraguayans eat it boiled or fried, as a side or as the meal itself, and an asado without it would feel incomplete.
Guaraní is an official language alongside Spanish under Paraguay’s constitution, and it shows on menus. A handful of words goes a long way:
| On the menu | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| so’o | Meat, as in chipa so’o or so’o josopy |
| pira | Fish, as in pira caldo |
| mandi’o | Cassava, as in pastel mandi’o, Paraguay’s take on empanadas: a cassava and cornmeal dough around a meat filling |
| kivevé | Squash cooked with cornmeal, milk, cheese and a little sugar |
| kosereva | A sour-orange (or grapefruit) preserve, eaten as a sweet |
| pohã ñana | Medicinal herbs, the ones that go into tereré |
For a few more words to take with you, see our Paraguay languages guide.
Tereré is Paraguay’s national drink and its most social habit: yerba mate drunk with ice-cold water, sipped through a bombilla (metal straw) from a cup called a guampa, often with pohã ñana crushed in a mortar and mixed into the water. In 2020 UNESCO inscribed “Practices and traditional knowledge of Terere in the culture of Pohã Ñana, Guaraní ancestral drink in Paraguay” on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. National Tereré Day falls on the last Saturday of February. The habit crosses the border, too: Paraguay’s 2011 law followed moves in parts of Brazil, such as Mato Grosso do Sul, to claim tereré as their own.
If you are invited into a tereré round, one person serves, traditionally the youngest, refilling the guampa for each person in turn from right to left. Say gracias only when you have had enough, because in a round it means you are done. To see the herbs themselves, walk the Paseo de los Yuyos at Asunción’s Mercado 4, a municipal market whose herb sellers, the yuyeras, were honored in 2025 by the Secretaría Nacional de Cultura for keeping this knowledge alive.
Mornings call for cocido: yerba mate toasted with sugar and a live coal, then topped with water or milk, with chipa on the side. Tereré’s hot cousin is mate, and our Argentina food guide explains how it is shared across the border. For something stronger, caña is Paraguay’s sugarcane spirit, distilled from cane honey rather than molasses, and on August 1 the custom is carrulim: caña with rue and lemon, taken as seven sips on an empty stomach to keep the month’s bad luck away.
That cocido-and-chipa pairing is the typical Paraguayan breakfast, and it comes back for the afternoon merienda. A family asado, often on a Sunday, brings beef, pork and chorizo off the grill with chipa guasu, boiled mandioca and a mixed salad.
Holy Week (Semana Santa) has its own food calendar. Families start making chipa on Holy Wednesday. Holy Thursday brings karu guasu, the last big meal before the fast, with roast meat, sopa paraguaya and chipa, and neighbors trade portions. On Good Friday many households neither cook nor eat meat, and the week’s chipa carries the day.
Mennonite settlers arrived in the central Chaco in 1926 and 1927 and founded colonies around Loma Plata, then Filadelfia and later Neuland. Their cooperatives run dairy plants that make milk, powdered milk and yogurt. Our Asunción, Chaco and Iguazú Falls itinerary stops at a Mennonite dairy and the colony museum in Filadelfia, and adds an evening asado at an estancia. The Chaco is hot for much of the year, so check our Paraguay weather guide for the comfortable months.
The CDC’s general advice for travelers is to avoid tap water where it might be contaminated, stick to factory-sealed drinks and skip ice where clean water is a concern. The same goes for the tereré jug, so ask what water went into it. Our Paraguay staying-healthy guide covers vaccines and the rest.
Tipping is optional. Paraguay’s restaurant association puts the standard at 10% of the bill, and service is not added for you, so leave it on the table if you were well looked after. Our Paraguay money guide has more on cash and tips.
You can certainly eat well in Asunción, and then the trip opens up when you follow the food out of the city: a tereré round in the afternoon heat, warm chipa from a roadside stop, an asado at an estancia. Browse our Paraguay food and drink tours for ideas, or let our Destination Consultants custom design your Paraguay trip around the tables you want to sit at. Or start with our Paraguay tours.
