Cusco & Machu Picchu Travel Guide
What to Eat in Cusco
A guide to eating well in Cusco and the Sacred Valley: Andean potatoes, corn and quinoa, cuy and lechon, Sunday adobo, the San Pedro Market, picanterias and chicha, fine dining with Andean ingredients, and eating safely at altitude.
Peru is one of the great food countries of the world, and while Lima gets most of the attention, Cusco and the Sacred Valley are where many of its ingredients come from. The Andes are the home of the potato, with thousands of native varieties, of giant-kernel corn, quinoa and kiwicha, and of a culinary tradition that goes back to the Incas and beyond. Eating in Cusco ranges from juice stalls and market counters to rustic picanterias, family restaurants serving hearty regional dishes, and some of the most ambitious contemporary kitchens in South America. Here is how to make the most of it.
The ingredients. Start by learning the produce. Potatoes come in every shape and color, from small yellow papas amarillas to purple and red varieties, and are eaten boiled, in soups, in stews and as chuño, the freeze-dried potato that the Andes have preserved for centuries. Corn, choclo, is served as giant white kernels with fresh cheese, in humitas and tamales, and as purple corn for the sweet drink chicha morada. Quinoa appears in soups, salads and desserts. Trout from Andean lakes and rivers is on almost every menu, and alpaca meat, lean and tender, is served grilled or as steak. Rocoto, a fiery red pepper, and aji amarillo, a fruity yellow chili, give the food its heat, and herbs such as huacatay, a black mint, and muña flavor sauces and teas.
The classic dishes. Cuy, guinea pig, is the iconic Andean dish, traditionally roasted whole or fried crisp and served on festive occasions; it is eaten mostly in specialist restaurants and in the villages around Cusco, and it appears on the table in the famous Last Supper in the Cathedral. Chiriuchu, a cold platter of guinea pig, chicken, sausage, cheese, seaweed, roe and corn cakes, is the traditional dish of Corpus Christi. Lechon, roast suckling pig with crackling and tamales, is a popular weekend lunch, and adobo cusqueño, a pork stew marinated in chicha and spices, is the Sunday breakfast of Cusco families. Chicharron, deep-fried pork served with corn, potatoes and mint, has its own street of restaurants in the city. Soups are a meal in themselves: caldo de gallina, chicken soup with noodles and potatoes, is the cure for everything, and quinoa soup is warming on cold evenings. Lomo saltado, a stir-fry of beef, onions, tomatoes and fries that shows the Chinese influence on Peruvian cooking, is on almost every menu.
Markets and street food. The San Pedro Market, a short walk from the Plaza de Armas, is the best place to start: order a mixed fruit juice from the juice ladies, wander the aisles of potatoes, corn and fruit, buy the giant round breads of Oropesa, and sit down at a food counter for soup or a set lunch. In the Sacred Valley, the markets of Pisac and Urubamba are good for fruit, bread baked in wood-fired ovens and snacks. Street food includes anticuchos, grilled beef heart skewers, in the evenings, and tamales and emoliente, a hot herbal drink, in the mornings.
Picanterias and chicherias. For a taste of traditional Cusco, look for picanterias, simple restaurants serving hearty regional food at lunchtime, often at shared tables, and chicherias, which serve chicha de jora, a lightly fermented corn beer brewed for thousands of years in the Andes. In villages and the valley, a pole with a red flag or flowers outside a house traditionally signals that chicha is available. Frutillada, chicha mixed with strawberries, is a pink, sweeter version popular in the valley.
Menus del dia. At lunchtime, many local restaurants offer a menu del dia, a fixed-price meal of soup, a main course and a drink, often for a very low price. It is the way locals eat, and a great way to try dishes cheaply. Look for places full of local workers.
Fine dining and Andean cuisine. Cusco has a thriving restaurant scene in which chefs reinterpret Andean ingredients with modern techniques, many in colonial houses around the Plaza de Armas and in San Blas, with tasting menus and pisco cocktails. Book ahead for the best-known places, especially in the dry season. In the Sacred Valley, MIL, the high-altitude restaurant and research center beside the Moray terraces created by the Lima chef Virgilio Martinez, offers a tasting menu built on ingredients from different altitudes and is a destination in its own right. Hotels such as Sumaq in Aguas Calientes and Explora in the valley also showcase Andean produce, and cooking classes that start with a market visit are a fun way to learn.
Drinks. Pisco, Peru's grape brandy, appears in the pisco sour, with lime, sugar and egg white, and the chilcano, with ginger ale and lime. Cusquena is the local beer. Coca tea, mate de coca, is offered in every hotel and is traditionally used to ease altitude symptoms; muña tea is a minty alternative. Peruvian coffee from the cloud forest below Machu Picchu is excellent, and chocolate from Cusco's lowland valleys has become a specialty, with workshops where you can make your own.
Eating safely at altitude. Go easy on rich food and alcohol in your first days at altitude, as digestion slows and alcohol hits harder. Drink bottled or filtered water, choose busy places with good turnover, and eat hot, freshly cooked food. Be cautious with raw salads, unpeeled fruit and ice in very basic places, and with ceviche far from the coast; trout ceviche is fine in good restaurants. Carry small notes in soles for markets and street food. Above all, be curious: the best meals in Cusco are often the simplest, eaten at a market counter or a shared table in a picanteria.