Food in Uruguay begins with beef and wood smoke. Uruguayan cuisine owes most of its everyday table to Spain and Italy. Mate, the drink Uruguayans share all day, goes everywhere with a thermos close behind, and the wine in your glass is most often Tannat, the country’s most planted grape.
Come hungry for the asado, then leave room for a chivito and for dulce de leche, which turns up in almost everything sweet.
Ask Uruguayans about their traditional food and most will start with the asado, meats cooked slowly over embers on a parrilla, an iron grill. Uruguay’s Ministry of Tourism calls it a social occasion as much as a meal: most homes have a parrillero, or built-in grill, and apartment buildings are designed with shared ones.
Uruguay keeps more than 11 million cattle for about 3.4 million people, and since 2006 the law has required every calf to be tagged and registered individually, so the beef can be traced to its farm.
A traditional Uruguayan asado starts with dry firewood, burned down to intense embers that the asador, the grill cook, tends for steady heat. Expect asado de tira (short ribs), vacío (flank), colita de cuadril (tri-tip) and the achuras, or offal.
Chorizo al pan is a grilled sausage in bread with Uruguayan chimichurri. Morcilla dulce, a sweet blood sausage that can carry raisins and orange, reflects a Canary Islands influence, and pamplona is pork or chicken rolled around cheese, red pepper and olives.
If you have shared an asado in Buenos Aires, the ritual will feel familiar, with local touches: Argentina’s choripán has its match in chorizo al pan, pamplona shares the grill, and the bottle is far more likely to be Tannat than Malbec. Our guide to Argentina food covers the other bank of the Río de la Plata.
Ask about Uruguay’s national dish and you will usually hear two answers. The tourism ministry names both as part of being Uruguayan: an asado or a chivito.
The chivito means “little goat,” yet there is no goat in it. The ministry dates it to the 1940s, when a customer at a Punta del Este restaurant asked for goat the kitchen did not have, and the owner, Antonio Carbonaro, served toasted bread with ham and a small, juicy steak instead. Cooks later added egg, cheese, bacon, red pepper, olives, lettuce and tomato, and the ministry now calls it a recipe of national heritage.
Typical Uruguayan dishes carry a strong European accent, mostly from Spain and Italy. Italian immigrants brought pizza, pasta and milanesas (breaded cutlets). Two local twists stand out: capeletis usually arrive with salsa Caruso, a homegrown sauce, and many Uruguayans keep the custom of eating ñoquis (gnocchi) on the 29th of every month.
Slow pot cooking, cocina de olla, gives lentil stews, puchero (boiled meats and vegetables) and mondongo (tripe). Pastel de carne, meat baked under a layer of mashed potato much like a shepherd’s pie, is a simple classic. Empanadas and seafood turn up on plenty of menus, and lamb is excellent in a country that exports wool. When it rains, Uruguayans fry tortas fritas, a simple dough of flour, fat, warm water and salt. The tourism ministry’s best guess is the countryside: rain stopped the outdoor work and sent everyone to the kitchen.
Dulce de leche, a sweet of the Río de la Plata region, is the undisputed star of Uruguayan confectionery, according to the national tourism board. It fills alfajores (sandwich cookies), rolls up inside panqueques (crepes), flavors ice cream and goes into chajá, a homegrown dessert.
The classic companion to mate is a bag of bizcochos, small sweet and savory pastries from the neighborhood bakery. For the late-afternoon merienda, a few with a café con leche is the simple, local choice.
Mate is far more than an afternoon tea. It is an infusion of dried yerba mate leaves, sipped from a gourd through a metal straw called a bombilla, at any hour and in any season. Montevideo’s tourism office calls it the national drink. Argentina, Paraguay and southern Brazil drink it too, but the tourism ministry says no country drinks more of it, proportionally, than Uruguay.
You will see the habit right away: a thermos of hot water under one arm, the mate in the other hand. Carrying the hot water in a thermos was a Uruguayan habit that took mate out of the house. The same gourd and bombilla pass from person to person, so if someone offers you one, take it as a gesture of welcome.
Tannat came from southwestern France in the 19th century. Around 1870, Pascual Harriague, a settler in Salto, found in it the grape for a great red, and the vineyard registry still lists it as Tannat (Harriague). It now covers 26.5% of Uruguay’s vineyard area, more than any other variety, according to the national wine institute. Expect firm tannins and dark fruit, a natural match for grilled beef and, Uruguayans will tell you, lamb.
Wine country is close: Canelones and Montevideo hold almost four of every five hectares of vines, so a winery lunch fits easily into a Montevideo stay. Our Uruguay food and wine tours show ways to make the vineyards part of your trip.
For something stronger, try grappamiel, grappa sweetened with honey. Montevideo’s port market also pours Uruguayan craft beer.
Montevideo’s tourism office calls the Mercado del Puerto a must for visitors and a meeting place for Uruguayans. It opened as a market on October 10, 1868, by the port in the Ciudad Vieja, under ironwork made at the Union Foundry in Liverpool and assembled by British smiths. Parrillas now fill the hall, with fish, seafood and empanadas alongside, and the city tour on our Montevideo and estancias itinerary pauses here, a natural lunch stop.
For a market that still sells produce, try the Mercado Agrícola de Montevideo in Goes, the city’s wholesale fruit and vegetable market from 1913, restored and reopened in 2013.
Tipping is customary but not fixed: the tourism ministry says 10% is common when service is not already included, and taxi drivers are usually tipped in the city. Non-residents paying with a foreign-issued card also get a 9-point VAT reduction on restaurant, bar and café bills, and on tastings at registered wine-tourism wineries, under a measure currently valid until April 30, 2027. Our Uruguay money guide has the details.
On food and water, CDC’s Travelers’ Health page for Uruguay recommends the hepatitis A vaccine for unvaccinated travelers aged one and older and points to its general safe food and drink advice. See staying healthy in Uruguay and talk to a travel clinic before you go. For ordering in Spanish, our Uruguay languages guide has the everyday phrases.
Certainly plan an asado and an afternoon at the Mercado del Puerto, then make the trip yours with a vineyard lunch outside Montevideo or a chivito in Punta del Este, where it was born.
Our Colonia and Montevideo itinerary includes an afternoon tasting Tannat in the vineyards around Montevideo. Every itinerary is a suggestion that expands to your plans, and our Destination Consultants can custom design a bespoke Uruguay trip around the wineries, estancias and markets that suit you. For the rest of the country, start with our Uruguay travel guide.
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