Bolivia: Food and the National Dish

A cuisine rooted in the Andes

Bolivia's food starts with the potato, which was first domesticated in the Andean highlands straddling Bolivia and Peru thousands of years ago; Bolivia still grows an extraordinary range of potato varieties, alongside quinoa (the country is one of the world's leading producers), corn and, at altitude, llama and alpaca meat. The lowland east, around Santa Cruz, looks and eats quite differently — more tropical, more beef, more yuca and plantain — so Bolivian food really comes in two distinct climates rather than one.

The signature dish: salteñas

Bolivia doesn't have a single official national dish, but salteñas come closest to being one. A salteña is a baked pastry shell filled with a stew — beef, chicken or pork with potato, peas, olives, raisins and a hard-boiled egg — thickened with enough gelatine that it stays liquid inside the pastry until it's baked, so cutting into one releases a genuine mouthful of savoury-sweet broth.

Salteñas are strictly a mid-morning food, sold and eaten roughly between breakfast and lunch, and offices across Bolivia genuinely pause for a salteña break most days. Pique macho — a large shared plate of fried beef and sausage strips piled over fries with onion, tomato, chilli and a fried egg — is the other dish with a real claim to national status, especially in Cochabamba, where it was invented.

Dishes to know

Five more to recognise across Bolivia:

• Pique macho — fried beef and sausage over a bed of fries, topped with

onion, tomato, chilli and egg, meant to be shared.

• Silpancho — a thin, breaded and fried beef cutlet served over rice and

fries with a fried egg and salad on top, a Cochabamba speciality.

• Sopa de maní — a peanut soup with beef and vegetables, sometimes finished

with a few fries dropped in just before serving.

• Anticuchos — grilled skewers of beef heart, marinated and charred, a

common street food shared with neighbouring Peru.

• Chairo — a hearty highland soup built on chuño, freeze-dried potato

preserved using the intense sun and cold nights of the altiplano.

Chuño and the Andean potato tradition

Chuño — potatoes left out to freeze overnight and dry in the intense altiplano sun over several days, repeated until the water is drawn out almost entirely — is one of the oldest food preservation techniques in the Americas, developed to store potatoes for years at a time at high altitude. It still turns up in soups and stews like chairo, giving them a distinctive earthy, slightly fermented flavour unlike fresh potato.

Drinks

Chicha, a fermented corn drink with roots going back to pre-Columbian times, and api, a hot, thick drink made from purple corn and usually paired with a pastry for breakfast, are both still widely drunk. Coca tea, made from the same leaf chewed traditionally across the Andes, is legal and commonly offered to help visitors adjust to Bolivia's high altitudes.

Eating as a traveller

Vegetarians will find quinoa, potato and vegetable soups manageable, though salteñas, pique macho and most Bolivian street food are built around meat. Tap water is not safe to drink in most of the country; stick to bottled water. Altitude affects appetite and digestion for most visitors arriving in La Paz, one of the highest capital cities in the world, so pace yourself and lean on coca tea if needed.

What to take from the table

A salteña, eaten properly (lean forward, expect a mess), is the best quick introduction to Bolivian food — and pique macho, shared among a table of people, is the dish that shows how much Bolivians enjoy eating together.