Short answer
Paraguayan cooking starts from 3 Guaraní ingredients, corn, cassava and beans, to which Spanish colonisation added rice, beef and vegetables, according to the Secretaría Nacional de Turismo (SENATUR). Its signature dishes: sopa paraguaya, chipa, mbeju and vori vori. Chipa has been the national food since 2014; tereré, the national drink since 2011, has been on UNESCO's intangible heritage list since 2020. Sources read on 7 October 2026.
Savoury dishes
| Dish | What it is, per the DINAPI list |
|---|---|
| Sopa paraguaya | Savoury cake made of corn flour |
| Sopa so'o | Sopa paraguaya with a meat filling |
| Chipa guasu | Made with fresh corn (choclo) |
| Chipa so'o | Chipa with meat |
| Mbeju | Flatbreads of starch, salt, pork fat, cheese and milk |
| Pastel mandi'o | Empanadas of mashed cassava and corn flour, filled with meat |
| Payagua mascada | Minced meat patty |
| Chicharó trenzado | Meat cut in braided strips, boiled then fried |
| Vori vori de gallina | Chicken broth with small balls of corn flour and cheese |
| So'o josopy (soyo) | Meat soup |
| Jopara | Mix of locro, beans, rice, meat and other ingredients |
| Arroz quesu | Rice with Paraguayan cheese |
| Kiveve | Polenta of squash, corn flour, sugar, milk and cheese |
This table takes 13 of the 51 preparations on the culinary heritage list that the Dirección Nacional de Propiedad Intelectual (DINAPI) declared of national interest in April 2018, with the description the list gives. The list also names 6 chipas and 3 locros: with minced meat, with cassava, and white.
Vori vori is served with beef, pork or chicken, or in a vegetarian version, according to SENATUR. It reports that the TasteAtlas guide named it best soup in the world in 2023 and 2024, then best dish in the world in 2025 and 2026.
Sweets and drinks
The same list describes these preparations:
- Mazamorra: made from corn.
- Kosereva: a preserve of bitter orange or grapefruit.
- Mbaipy he'ê: polenta with sugarcane syrup.
- Dulce de guayaba: guava paste. The list also includes Paraguayan dulce de leche.
- Cocido quemado: made with yerba mate.
- Carrulim: caña (a sugarcane spirit), rue and lemon.
Tereré
Tereré is prepared in a jug or thermos: cold water mixed with pohã ñana, medicinal herbs crushed in a mortar. It is served in a glass filled with yerba mate and drunk through a bombilla, a metal or cane straw. This is UNESCO's description; it inscribed these practices in 2020 on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and they have been passed down in families since about the 16th century.
Ley N° 4261, promulgated on 7 January 2011, declares it cultural heritage and the national drink. It sets the Día Nacional del Tereré on the last Saturday of February: the next one falls on 27 February 2027.
What the state has declared
- 2011, Ley N° 4261: tereré, cultural heritage and national drink.
- 2014, Ley N° 5267: chipa, national food. The Día Nacional del Chipá falls on the second Friday of August; the next one, on 13 August 2027.
- 2015, Resolución N° 829 of the Secretaría Nacional de Cultura (SNC): the knowledge and techniques of chipa making, intangible cultural heritage.
- 2017, Resolución SNC N° 592: the traditional, handmade preparation of vori vori, locro, sopa paraguaya and jopara, intangible cultural heritage of Paraguay.
- 2018, DINAPI Resolución N° 05: a list of 51 preparations declared of national interest.
- 2020, UNESCO: the practices and traditional knowledge of tereré, on the Representative List.
Where to try them
SENATUR publishes 3 lists on its site: restaurants serving Paraguayan cooking, the venues of its vori vori guide, and Chipa Rapé, a route of chiperías starting from Asunción. It notes that chipa is traditionally baked in clay ovens.
To choose a table in Asunción, see our restaurant guide; for ingredients, the supermarket ranking.