Panamanian Food and Drink

Panamanian cooking is quieter than its neighbors and more layered than it first appears. Spanish, Indigenous, African, Afro-Antillean, Chinese and North American influences all arrived by the same route, and the result is a kitchen that is rarely spicy and almost always generous.

The dishes to look for

• Sancocho. The national dish and effectively the national remedy: chicken and ñame simmered with culantro until the broth is thick. Eaten for a hangover, for a cold and for its own sake.
• Ropa vieja. Shredded beef stewed down with tomato and peppers, served with rice and beans. Shared with Cuba and cooked differently here.
• Patacones. Twice fried green plantain, salted, served with everything.
• Hojaldres. Fried bread eaten at breakfast with eggs and salty white cheese. The best thing on any Panamanian breakfast table.
• Ceviche. Corvina cured in lime, sold by the cup at the fish market in Panama City and eaten standing up. The one dish visitors most reliably go back for.
• Rice with coconut. On the Caribbean coast, in Bocas and Portobelo, rice and beans are cooked in coconut milk and the whole register of the food changes. This is the Afro-Antillean kitchen, and it is the best eating in the country.
• Fish from a Guna kitchen. In Guna Yala the meal is whatever came out of the water that morning, with coconut rice and fried plantain.

Coffee

Boquete and the Chiriqui highlands grow coffee at altitude in near constant mist, and the Geisha varietal grown there regularly sells at auction for more per pound than any coffee in the world. A farm visit above Boquete is one of the best half days in Panama, and the cupping at the end of it is the part people remember. A cup of the good stuff in a Boquete cafe costs a fraction of what the same cup costs abroad.

Drinks

• Chicheme. Thick, sweet, corn based and served cold. Somewhere between a drink and a dessert.
• Raspados. Shaved ice with syrup and condensed milk, from a cart, in the heat.
• Seco. The national spirit, distilled from sugar cane, drunk with milk and ice as seco con leche. It is not rum and it does not taste like it.
• Fresh juice. Ordered by the fruit rather than the menu. Ask for it with purified water, which any established place uses as a matter of course.

Eating well and safely

• Fondas, the small family dining rooms, serve the best value lunch in the country. Look for the one full of people eating.
• Street food cooked in front of you and served hot is a reasonable risk; food sitting at room temperature is not.
• Tap water is drinkable in Panama City and most of the country and is genuinely good. Bocas del Toro and Guna Yala are the usual exceptions.
• Wash or peel fruit bought in a market.

For paying, see the money guide; for the manners around a shared table, the culture guide.

Sources

• UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office: Panama travel advice: the index to the entry, safety, regional and health pages this cluster draws on, and the standing guidance that no travel can be guaranteed safe. Accessed 17 September 2026.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Panama traveler health: yellow fever vaccine recommended for travelers aged nine months and over going to all mainland areas east of the Canal Zone including Darien Province and the comarcas of Embera and Guna Yala, and not recommended for travel limited to the Canal Zone, areas west of it, Panama City, the Pearl Islands of Panama Province or the San Blas Islands of Guna Yala; not required for direct travel from the United States and required for travelers aged one year and over arriving from a country with a risk of transmission; malaria transmission recorded in seven provinces and three comarcas with rare cases elsewhere, and no transmission in the Canal Zone or in Panama City. Accessed 17 September 2026.