Food guide
Eating in Guam: Red Rice, Kelaguen and the Fiesta Table
The best way to understand Chamorro food is to start with where it is served. On Guam, the fiesta table — the spread laid out for a village feast or a family celebration — is much more than a meal: it is how people are brought together, and it sits at the centre of Chamorro culture. Most of the dishes worth seeking out are the ones that belong on it.
Updated 2026-09-19
The fiesta table
A fiesta table is laid out for family and guests alike, and visitors who join a village fiesta are welcome at it. The dishes that turn up on it include eskabeche, fish cooked with vegetables and vinegar, and kadon pika, a spicy chicken stew — and, alongside them, the staples that anchor almost every Chamorro meal.
Red rice, kelaguen and barbecue
Red rice is the first of those staples, coloured with achote, the seed known elsewhere as annatto, and it appears next to nearly everything. Kelaguen is the dish to try first: chopped meat or seafood — chicken, shrimp or fish — dressed with lemon juice, grated coconut, hot pepper and green onion, closer in spirit to a ceviche than to a stew.
Barbecue is the other constant. At the Wednesday night market of Chamorro Village in Hagåtña, the smell of the grills meets you on the way in, local dance groups play to the crowd, and the stalls add fresh fruit juices and produce from local farms. For a visitor without a fiesta invitation, it is one of the easiest places to eat the island's food alongside the people who live there.
Breakfast, and the rest of the table
Chamorro mornings have their own favourites, such as chorizo Spanish rolls and fried rice. Beyond them, Guam eats like the crossroads it is: the resort area's restaurants lean heavily toward Japanese and Korean cooking for the visitors who fly in from those countries, and Filipino dishes are part of everyday island eating.