Dominican Republic Food Guide

The plate the country eats

Ask what Dominicans eat at midday and the answer is la bandera, the flag: rice, stewed beans and a piece of meat, usually with salad and fried plantain alongside. It is the national lunch in the way that a sandwich is not, and it is what you will be served if you eat where local people eat.

Plantain, three ways

• Mangu: green plantain boiled and mashed, eaten at breakfast under pickled red onion, usually beside fried cheese, fried salami and egg. That combination is called los tres golpes, the three hits, and it is the best breakfast in the Caribbean.
• Tostones: green plantain sliced, fried, flattened and fried again. Salty, starchy, served with almost anything.
• Maduros: ripe plantain, fried until it caramelises at the edges. Sweet rather than savoury, and the version most visitors prefer first.

Sancocho

The country's celebration dish: a thick stew of several meats with root vegetables, cooked long and eaten slowly, usually with rice on the side even though it hardly needs it. It appears at family gatherings and on cold wet days in the mountains, and it is not a light lunch.

The coast

On the coast, fish comes whole and fried, or in coconut sauce, and it is usually the best thing on the menu. A beachfront shack that is full of Dominicans at two in the afternoon is a better bet than anywhere with laminated photographs of the food.

Eating well

• Eat where there is a line of local customers and a fast turnover.
• Look for the word comedor: a small kitchen serving a set lunch, and the cheapest good meal in the country.
• Carry pesos. The best kitchens are the least likely to take a card.
• Drink bottled or filtered water, and be sensible about ice away from established places.

A note on ordering

Spanish is the official language, and a menu in a comedor will be in Spanish only. A dozen words of food vocabulary changes the trip more than any other preparation of comparable effort.

Sources

• UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office: Dominican Republic travel advice: the index to the entry, safety and health pages this cluster draws on. Accessed 18 September 2026.
• Ethnologue, SIL International: Dominican Republic country language record: 1 living indigenous language, and Spanish recorded as the official language of the country. Accessed 18 September 2026.