Curaçao's signature dish: a round of Gouda cheese, hollowed out and filled with spiced meat. It is the dish to try first, and it appears on the menus of local restaurants and lunch counters across the island.

Where can I eat local food in Willemstad?

Marshe Bieu, also called Plasa Bieu, the old market hall in Punda, is the classic choice: several cooks serve stobá, soups, fish and other local dishes at long shared benches. It is open for lunch and winds down by mid-afternoon, so go around midday.

What is Blue Curaçao made from?

The dried peel of the laraha, a bitter orange descended from trees the Spanish brought to the island in the 16th century. The peel is distilled with spices into Curaçao liqueur at Landhuis Chobolobo, where the distillery runs tours and tastings.

Is Blue Curaçao naturally blue?

No. The blue colour is added — a marketing choice to make the liqueur stand out — and the same distillery makes it in other colours as well.

Food guide

Eating in Curaçao: Keshi Yena, Stobá and a Bitter Orange

Curaçao's waterfront menus can make it look like an island of international cooking, but its own kitchen is distinct and easy to find once you know where to look. It is a Creole table of stews, soups and cornmeal, built from what a dry island could grow, catch and trade, and served at its most local in lunch halls and simple snack bars rather than on the terraces facing the harbour.

Updated 2026-09-19

The Creole table

Keshi yena is the dish to try first: a round of Gouda, hollowed out and filled with spiced meat, and the island's signature dish. Stobá is the everyday stew, most often made with goat, and funchi, a firm cornmeal similar to polenta, is the side that goes with it. Guiambo is an okra soup, and pastechi, fried pastries filled with cheese, meat or fish, are eaten at any hour.

Fresh fish anchors the rest of the menu, from red snapper to wahoo and mahi-mahi, and iguana soup survives as a traditional speciality for those who want to try it.

Lunch at Marshe Bieu

The simplest way into the local kitchen is lunch at Marshe Bieu, also known as Plasa Bieu, the old market hall in Punda near the floating market and the post office. Several cooks run open kitchens along one side of the building, and diners carry their plates to long shared benches on the other. It is a lunchtime place that winds down by mid-afternoon, so arrive around midday for the widest choice.

A short walk away, boats tie up along the canal near the pontoon bridge to sell just-caught fish, tropical fruit and vegetables from their decks. The scale of this floating market varies with trade across the water from the South American mainland, so treat it as a stroll rather than a fixed spectacle.

Laraha: the orange behind the liqueur

The Spanish brought orange trees to Curaçao in the 16th century, and in the island's dry climate they produced a bitter fruit that was no good to eat. That fruit, the laraha, turned out to have an unusually fragrant peel. Dried in the sun and distilled with spices, the peel became Curaçao liqueur, which is still made at Landhuis Chobolobo, a country house on the edge of Willemstad where Senior & Co. runs a working distillery with tours and tastings.

The famous blue is not natural. The colour was added to make the drink stand out, and the distillery also makes the liqueur in other colours, so the bottle shade tells you about marketing rather than about the orange.

Threads from the Netherlands and the mainland

Two outside influences run through the island's restaurants. The long connection with the Netherlands brought Dutch cheese into the Creole kitchen and put Indonesian rijsttafel, a spread of many small dishes, on some menus. The closeness of Venezuela and Colombia shows up in the street food and snack bars, where Latin American flavours sit comfortably beside Curaçao's own.

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