Machu Picchu food is a short subject inside the gate and a long one outside it. You cannot take food into the citadel. The one hotel at the entrance, the Belmond Sanctuary Lodge, runs a lunch buffet that Belmond lists as open to the public. Everything else happens before and after: in Aguas Calientes, on the train, and in Cusco and the Sacred Valley, where you eat most of your meals.
Peru is known for its food, and our Peru food and drink guide covers the country.
The food rules are short, and the Ministry of Culture’s park guards enforce them. The official code of conduct bans entering the citadel with food or kitchenware, meaning plates, cutlery and thermoses, and with any kind of alcohol. You may not feed animals, wild or domestic, or leave litter of any kind. Street vending is banned inside the monument and on the grounds around it, all the way down to Puente Ruinas. Break a rule and you can be put out without a refund.
Water is not on the prohibited list. Separately, Peru’s single-use plastics law of 2018, Ley 30884, bans plastic bags, straws and foam (expanded polystyrene) food and drink containers in protected natural areas and World Heritage sites, and Machu Picchu is both. Bags larger than 40 × 35 × 20 cm (16 × 14 × 8 inches) are prohibited too, so check your daypack against our Machu Picchu packing list.
So the answer to “is there food at Machu Picchu” is no, not inside. Eat before you go in and after you come out.
The Sanctuary Lodge, a Belmond hotel, is the only hotel at the citadel gates, a three-minute walk from the entrance. Belmond lists its daily lunch buffet as open to non-guests as well as guests, so confirm it before you plan around it. A hotel buffet, though, not a snack stand. And treat it as the end of your visit, not a break in it: our understanding is that once you leave the citadel for lunch, you cannot go back in.
Aguas Calientes is where the train stops and where the buses start for the 30-minute ride up to the ruins. There are many simple restaurants in town, and the better options are generally in the hotels. Our itineraries build the meal in here: on the Inca Trail trek you ride the bus down after the guided visit for a buffet lunch before the train to Cusco. If you can spare a day, we recommend a night in Aguas Calientes. Dinner without a train to catch is a different meal.
PeruRail’s Vistadome serves a snack made with Andean ingredients as part of the ride. On the Expedition, snacks and drinks are for sale on board. Neither one is lunch.
On the Inca Trail the kitchen walks with you. Our Inca Trail itinerary includes cooks, porters and all the food: three breakfasts, three lunches, two dinners, a morning snack, afternoon tea and filtered water. Tips for the cooks, porters and guides are not included, so plan for them. The Salkantay trek works the same way, with camp cooks. Our other Machu Picchu hiking tours include lodge-to-lodge routes.
Cusco, at 3,400 m (11,150 ft), is where most Machu Picchu trips start and end, and its food is Andean: potatoes, maize, quinoa, lamb, guinea pig. The place to taste it is a picanterÃa. Peru’s Ministry of Culture declared Cusco’s picanterÃas and chicherÃas national cultural heritage in 2015. They are commonly family homes turned into dining rooms, traditionally run by women, and they serve mainly in the afternoon, after lunch hours.
A picante is a small serving, usually a hot stew of potato or quinoa with ajà (chili). PicanterÃas are also prized for lamb and beef dishes, offal included, fried or boiled. In a chicherÃa the picante traditionally comes free with your chicha.
Cusco’s emblematic dish is chiriuchu, “cold chili”. It is a plate of many parts: cuy (guinea pig), boiled hen, a maize tortilla made with the hen’s broth, cecina and chalona (two kinds of salted, dried lamb), sausage, cheese, fish roe, seaweed, red rocoto pepper and toasted corn. The cooks’ advice: take a little of several parts in one mouthful, never just one. It is the dish of Corpus Christi, held 60 days after Easter and declared national heritage in 2004. Our Peru holidays guide has the dates.
Cuy is no novelty act in Peru. The agriculture ministry gave it a national day, the second Friday of October, to promote raising it and eating it. Try it once, here, where it belongs. Rocoto relleno, the stuffed rocoto pepper, is another city’s dish: it belongs to the picanterÃas of Arequipa.
The Sacred Valley sits lower than Cusco. Our Sacred Valley tours often include Pisac and its market.
In northern Peru the maize drink is chicha de jora, jora being the word there for germinated maize. In Cusco the germinated maize is wiñapu, and the drink is chicha de wiñapu, aqa in Quechua, which the Ministry of Culture calls the emblematic drink of the Tawantinsuyu, the Inca state. Cusco’s version adds ground wheat, takes three days to make and is served in the afternoon in a large glass called a caporal. In the rainy season, ask for frutillada, made with a local strawberry.
Coca leaf is legal in Peru for traditional use. A state company, ENACO, is the only one authorized to buy, process and sell it, for traditional chewing and for processed products. Mate de coca is tea made from the leaf. Treat it as a tradition, not a treatment. For altitude, the CDC’s advice for Machu Picchu and Peru’s other high places is to talk to your doctor, and our staying healthy at Machu Picchu page covers the rest.
The CDC’s advice for Peru is to avoid contaminated food and water: no tap water where it may be contaminated, no ice, factory-sealed drinks, coffee or tea only steaming hot. At a buffet, hot food should be steaming and cold food chilled. The CDC also lists ceviche among the raw foods to avoid.
Lima is the place for Peru’s famous restaurants, but we can book tables in Cusco or any Peruvian city: start with our Peru food and wine tours, or ask us to build a custom Machu Picchu trip around the table. Everything else is on our Machu Picchu page.
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