Food guide
Eating Panama: Sancocho, Two Coasts and Seco
Panama's food culture runs on a genuine geographic split — the everyday inland plate, the Caribbean coast's own Afro-Antillean cooking, and a national spirit most visitors have never heard of before arriving. Boquete's coffee scene is Panama's best-known food-and-drink export; what follows is what Panamanians actually eat day to day.
Updated 2026-08-16
Sancocho and the Everyday Plate
Sancocho, a hearty chicken soup built around ñame (a starchy tuber), yuca and other root vegetables, seasoned with culantro rather than cilantro, is widely considered Panama's national dish — a Sunday family staple and the food most Panamanians would point to first if asked what defines their cuisine. Patacones, twice-fried green plantain discs pressed flat between fryings, appear alongside nearly every meal as the default starchy side, while hojaldre, a fried disc of dough similar to a savoury doughnut, is a common breakfast item often paired with eggs or cheese. The everyday lunch spot is the fonda, a small, informal comida corriente restaurant serving a fixed plate of rice, beans, a protein and a side for a quick, cheap meal — a tradition with a genuine debt to Panama's historic Chinese immigrant community, many of whom arrived to build the railroad and later the Canal and went on to run a large share of the country's neighbourhood eateries, a presence still visible in fonda menus and corner grocery stores today.
Two Coasts, Two Cuisines
Panama's food changes noticeably depending on which coast you're eating on. On the Pacific side, ceviche — white fish, typically corvina, cured in lime with onion and chilli — is the signature cold dish, eaten as a snack or light meal rather than a formal course, sold from casual stands as often as restaurants. On the Caribbean side, particularly around Bocas del Toro, the Afro-Antillean heritage shows up directly on the plate: coconut rice and beans, cooked with coconut milk rather than plain water, and rondón (or “run down”), a rich stew of fish or seafood simmered slowly in coconut milk with root vegetables and Caribbean spicing, both dishes tracing the same Jamaican and English-speaking Caribbean migrant roots as the region's Guari-Guari Creole language. Trying both coasts' versions of a similar dish — a coconut-based Caribbean stew against a lime-cured Pacific ceviche — is one of the clearer ways to taste Panama's own internal geography.
Seco: the National Spirit That Isn't Rum
Despite Panama's Caribbean coastline, its defining spirit is seco, a clear, sugarcane-based liquor distilled and then filtered through activated charcoal — a process that gives it a distinct character somewhere between rum and vodka rather than a close relative of either. The classic way to drink it is “seco con leche,” mixed with whole milk over ice, a combination that sounds unlikely to most first-time visitors but is a genuinely mainstream order across the country rather than a novelty. Chichas, fresh fruit juices blended with water and a little sugar — maracuyá (passion fruit), tamarindo and pipa (young coconut water drunk straight from the shell) among the most common — are the everyday non-alcoholic counterpart, sold from street carts throughout Panama City and beyond.