Peruvian Food and Drink: Ceviche, Pisco and What to Eat Where

Peruvian food collects honors the way other cuisines collect cookbooks. In 2023 UNESCO inscribed the making and eating of ceviche on its list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, a first for Peruvian cooking. The World Travel Awards named Peru the World’s Leading Culinary Destination eight years in a row up to 2019, and again in 2024 and 2025.

People still ask for Peru’s national dish. Ceviche is the safe answer and the least useful one. The better question is where you are standing. The coast, the Andes and the Amazon each cook with what grows there, and European, African, Chinese and Japanese cooks have added their own layer.

Ceviche, Leche de Tigre and Peru’s Coast

Ceviche

Start with ceviche (also spelled cebiche): raw fish marinated in citrus juice and seasoned with chili and salt, with local produce on the side. Peru declared it national cultural heritage in 2004 and celebrates it every June 28. The UNESCO listing covers more than a recipe: the family know-how, the fishers’ festivity of Saint Peter, and the cevicherías where traditional women cooks stand out. Recipes change from region to region, and each region is proud of its own.

Leche de tigre and tiradito

Leche de tigre, “tiger’s milk,” is the bright, spicy citrus marinade that cures the fish in a classic ceviche. The name does half the selling. Tiradito is ceviche’s Japanese-Peruvian cousin: the fish is cut in thin slices, and the lime juice goes on in moderate amounts only as the plate is served.

Causa, ají de gallina and Lima’s home cooking

One ingredient ties the next dishes together: ají amarillo, the yellow chili. Causa limeña is served cold: yellow potato mashed with ají amarillo and lime, layered with chicken or tuna, avocado and mayonnaise. One story says women sold it in 1820 to raise money for San Martín’s independence campaign, calling “por la causa,” for the cause. Another places it in the War of the Pacific. Pick your favorite.

Ají de gallina is shredded hen in a creamy sauce of ají amarillo, bread soaked in milk, Parmesan and walnuts, served with rice, boiled potatoes, egg and black olives. Papa a la huancaína puts boiled potatoes under a sauce of fresh cheese, ají amarillo, evaporated milk and crackers; it comes from Huancayo, in the Andes. Papa rellena is mashed potato stuffed with seasoned beef, hard-boiled egg, raisins and olives, then fried.

Chifa and Nikkei: Why Peruvian Food Tastes Partly Asian

If a Peruvian dish tastes of soy sauce and a very hot pan, that is not a fusion trend. Chinese immigrants began arriving in 1849 and brought the wok. Their kitchen became chifa, from the Cantonese words for “eat” and “rice,” and its arroz chaufa, fried rice with soy sauce, Chinese onion, egg and meat, is as Peruvian as anything here.

Lomo saltado is the proof on one plate: strips of beef stir-fried fast and hot with red onion, tomato and ají amarillo, seasoned with sillao (soy sauce), and served with French fries and rice. Peruvian potatoes, Chinese technique.

The Japanese came next. On April 3, 1899, the steamer Sakura Maru brought the first 790 Japanese immigrants to Peru. Their Nikkei kitchen added Japanese technique, sake, mirin and tofu, and gave Peru tiradito.

Potatoes, Corn and the Andean Kitchen

The potato is Andean. FAO dates its domestication to about 8,000 years ago, in the high Andes around Lake Titicaca, which Peru shares with Bolivia (see our Bolivia food and drink guide). Peru alone grows more than 3,500 varieties, according to its state news agency, and the International Potato Center counts more than 4,000 native varieties across the Andes of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. A highland market shows you colors and shapes you did not know potatoes came in.

Corn is the other pillar. Peru grows 52 races of maize, according to its agriculture ministry, among them the purple corn behind chicha morada, fresh choclo, and the corn toasted into cancha. Quinoa is Andean too, maca comes from the Bombón plateau between Junín and Pasco, and the Amazon adds camu camu, a fruit with some 65 times the vitamin C of a lemon.

Pachamanca

Pachamanca means “earth pot” in Quechua (pacha, earth; manka, pot), and that is what it is. Cooks set hot stones in a hole in the ground, layer meats, potatoes, sweet potato, corn and herbs such as huacatay and muña, cover it with leaves and seal it with earth. Then everyone waits two to three hours. The method is pre-Hispanic, and Peru declared pachamanca national cultural heritage in 2003. Food for a crowd, not a quick lunch.

Cuy

For the bold and brave: cuy, guinea pig. It was Andean food long before the Spanish arrived, and it was used in ritual ceremonies. You will meet it fried (cuy frito), flattened and fried crisp (cuy chactado) or in a spicy stew (picante de cuy). In Cusco, as across the Andes, it is a delicacy. Whether it is a dare is up to you. For Cusco and Machu Picchu, see our Machu Picchu food and drink guide.

Arequipa: rocoto relleno and the picantería

Arequipa cooks its own way, and the place to taste it is the picantería, the city’s traditional eating house. The signature is rocoto relleno: a rocoto pepper with its veins removed, stuffed with a stew of meat, onion, peanuts, raisins and olive. Chupe de camarones, a shrimp chowder, is the other emblem. See our Arequipa tours.

Peruvian Food by Region

In the Amazon, look for juane, rice, hen and egg cooked in a bijao leaf for the Fiesta de San Juan on June 24, and tacacho con cecina, green plantain balls with dried, smoked pork. The rest of the jungle table is in our Amazon rainforest food and drink guide.

Street Food, Sweets and Lima’s Food Scene

Lima’s fame rests on its chefs, but a culinary explorer eats just as well at market stalls, street carts and plain cafés. Look for anticuchos: skewers of beef heart marinated in ají panca (a dried red chili), vinegar, cumin and garlic, grilled and served with potatoes and corn. Afro-Peruvians in colonial times turned cuts others threw away into this dish, and anticuchos are tied to Lima’s Señor de los Milagros procession. Pollo a la brasa, rotisserie chicken, appeared near Lima in the 1950s.

For dessert, picarones are squash and sweet potato fritters in chancaca (raw cane sugar) syrup. Mazamorra morada is a purple corn pudding. Arroz con leche came with the Spanish and is served hot or cold with cinnamon. Suspiro a la limeña is manjar blanco, Peru’s dulce de leche, under meringue. Sweet, then sweeter.

You may still read that Mistura, Lima’s big food fair, takes place every year. It did, for ten editions. The last was in 2017.

Pisco, Pisco Sour and the Chile Question

Pisco is a grape spirit and Peru’s first denomination of origin, recognized on December 12, 1990. By law it is made only in five coastal regions, Lima, Ica, Arequipa, Moquegua and Tacna, from eight approved grape varieties, and distilled from freshly fermented must with no added water or sugar.

The pisco sour is Peru’s national cocktail: pisco, lime juice, syrup and egg white, with a few drops of Angostura bitters on top. Peru declared it national cultural heritage in 2007.

Now the delicate part. Chile also makes a grape spirit called pisco and protects the name under its own law, with a legal pisco zone in its Atacama and Coquimbo regions. Each country considers pisco its own. We leave that argument to them. Our Peru Winery & Gastronomy Tour pairs pisco sours in Lima with wine bodegas in Ica and a pisco tasting in Chincha.

Chicha Morada, Inca Kola and Coca Tea

Two chichas, two different drinks. Chicha morada is dried purple corn cooked with fruit and spices and served cold, with no alcohol. Chicha de jora is the old one: malted corn, fermented, the drink the Incas held sacred, aqha in Quechua. Fresh tropical fruit juices fill out the list.

Inca Kola is the golden-yellow soda Joseph Robinson Lindley launched in Lima on January 18, 1935. In 1999 the Coca-Cola Company bought a 49% stake.

In the highlands you will meet mate de coca, coca tea. Coca leaf has been used against altitude sickness, but the CDC says no strong evidence shows that it works, and it may cause a positive drug test for cocaine metabolites. If your job tests you, skip it.

Tipping, Water and Eating Ceviche Safely

Tipping. Restaurants and hotels may add a service charge, the recargo al consumo, of up to 13%, but they must tell you in advance, and posted prices must include tax. A tip (propina) on top is voluntary. More on our money in Peru page.

Water. The CDC advises sealed bottled drinks over tap water, no ice where the water may be unsafe, and no raw seafood “cooked” with citrus, naming ceviche. That is the official line; the decision is yours. For the rest, see staying healthy in Peru.

Build Food Into Your Peru Trip

Peru is not normally thought of as a chocolate country, yet cacao’s story starts close by: the oldest evidence of its use, about 5,300 years old, comes from the upper Amazon in southeast Ecuador. Our Peru Chocolate Tour, an extension from Cusco, takes you to an organic farm to learn the cacao harvest and fermentation and make your own hot chocolate.

See all our Peru food and wine tours, ask us for a custom Peru itinerary built around the meals you care about, or start with our Peru travel guide.