Food guide
Eating in Ecuador: Three Biomes, Three Cuisines
Most countries have a national cuisine with regional variations. Ecuador's food identity runs the other way: the highlands, the coast and the Amazon each produce a genuinely distinct cuisine shaped directly by what that biome provides, and a traveller moving between regions in a single trip notices the shift as clearly as the change in climate.
Updated 2026-08-15
The highlands: potatoes, corn and cuy
Andean Ecuador's food is built on crops that thrive at altitude — dozens of potato varieties, corn (choclo) and quinoa form the backbone of highland cooking, most visibly in locro de papa, a thick potato-and-cheese soup, and mote (hominy corn) served as a side to nearly everything. Cuy, roasted guinea pig, is the highlands' most distinctive dish — a genuine traditional food with deep Andean roots rather than a novelty staged for tourists, most commonly found at markets and specialist restaurants outside Quito rather than on every menu in the capital itself. Hornado, slow-roasted pork served with mote and llapingachos (cheese-stuffed potato patties), is the other highland institution, and Quito's own market halls are the most reliable place to try it made properly.
The coast: ceviche, seafood and plantain
Coastal Ecuadorian food runs almost entirely on seafood and plantain, a sharp contrast with the highlands' potato-and-corn base. Ceviche here is typically cooked briefly rather than served raw-cured in the Peruvian style, and shrimp ceviche is the coast's signature version, often served with popcorn or plantain chips on the side. Encebollado, a fish-and-yuca soup topped with pickled onion, functions as the coast's unofficial hangover cure and breakfast staple in equal measure, sold from small stalls throughout Guayaquil and coastal towns. Plantain appears in nearly every form imaginable — fried green (patacones), fried ripe, mashed (bolón) — and functions as the coast's staple starch the way potato does in the highlands.
The Amazon: river fish and yuca
Amazonian Ecuadorian food centres on river fish — often grilled whole and wrapped in bijao or banana leaf, a cooking method called maito — and yuca (cassava) rather than potato or plantain as the staple starch. Chicha, a fermented yuca or corn drink with deep roots in Indigenous Amazonian culture, is offered in many community-tourism settings as a genuine cultural practice rather than a tourist prop, though the fermentation process (traditionally involving chewing and spitting, now often done mechanically in tourism contexts) is worth knowing about before trying it so it isn't a surprise. Amazon eco-lodges typically build meals around what's locally available — river fish, yuca, plantain and tropical fruit — reflecting genuine subsistence patterns rather than a curated “jungle cuisine” concept.