Paraguay Food Guide

Paraguay eats differently from its neighbors and the reason is historical. Guarani staples, principally maize and cassava, were never displaced here the way they were elsewhere. They were joined by Spanish cattle and dairy and the result is a cuisine of corn, cassava, cheese and beef that belongs to nowhere else.

Chipa

Chipa is the national bread and it contains no wheat. It is made from cassava starch and maize flour with cheese, egg and fat, formed into rings or short batons, and baked in a tatakua, the domed clay oven that stands in yards across rural Paraguay. Wood is burned inside it until the brick is hot, the embers are raked out and the chipa goes in to bake on the floor of the oven.

It is sold everywhere, hot, by vendors who board buses and work the queues at terminals. Eat it within the hour. Chipa that has gone cold is a different and much sadder food, and this is the single most common disappointment among visitors who buy it in a supermarket.

The rest of the table

• Sopa paraguaya. Not a soup. It is a dense, moist cornbread with cheese and onion, and the name is one of the country's better running jokes.
• Chipa guasu. The softer cousin, made with fresh corn, closer to a savory pudding, and often the better of the two.
• Mbeju. A flat cassava and cheese griddle cake, cooked in a pan, eaten hot, usually at breakfast.
• Mandioca. Boiled cassava arrives with almost every meal the way bread does elsewhere. It is not a side dish so much as the floor of the plate.
• Asado. Beef over wood, on the same terms as in Argentina and Uruguay, and typically the center of a Sunday.
• Bori bori. A beef broth with cornmeal and cheese dumplings, and the thing to eat when a winter front comes through.
• Surubi and dorado. River fish from the Parana and the Paraguay, at their best close to the water in Encarnacion or Pilar.

Terere

Terere is yerba mate drunk cold, and it is the most Paraguayan thing there is. UNESCO inscribed the practices and traditional knowledge of terere in the culture of Poha Nana on its Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2020. The inscription describes a drink prepared in a jug or thermos in which cold water is mixed with Poha Nana, medicinal herbs crushed in a mortar.

In practice it is a thermos of iced water, a guampa of yerba and a metal bombilla, and it is shared. One person serves, fills the guampa, passes it, takes it back, refills it and passes it on. You drink the whole thing and hand it back. See the culture and etiquette guide for what to do when it reaches you, because getting it wrong is the easiest small mistake to make here.

Practical

• Lunch is the main meal and the kitchen that is serious about it is serious at midday.
• Vegetarians do better than they expect, because cassava, corn and cheese carry so much of the cuisine, and worse than they hope in a country where asado is the social default.
• Drink bottled or treated water, and be careful with ice outside established places.
• Street food is good and the chipa vendors are the best of it. Buy where the queue is.

Sources

• UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage: Practices and traditional knowledge of Terere in the culture of Poha Nana, Guarani ancestral drink in Paraguay, inscribed on the Representative List in 2020, recording a drink prepared in a jug or thermos in which cold water is mixed with Poha Nana crushed in a mortar. Accessed 17 September 2026.
• UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office: Paraguay 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: Paraguay traveler health: a yellow fever vaccine recommended for all travelers aged nine months and over except where travel is limited to the city of Asuncion, and separately a country entry requirement under which the vaccine is not required for direct travel from the United States but is required for travelers aged one year and over arriving from Bolivia, Brazil, Peru or Venezuela, counting airport transits and layovers of more than 24 hours in those countries; malaria recorded as a risk in some parts of Paraguay with no area named. Accessed 17 September 2026.