Eating in the Andes: The Highland Larder of Cusco

Andean cooking around Cusco is the product of altitude, ingenuity and an extraordinarily long agricultural history. This is one of the places where humans first domesticated the potato and grains such as quinoa, and the highland table still rests on those foundations — hearty, rooted in the seasons, and far more varied than its reputation suggests.

This is a guide to that larder: the staple ingredients, the dishes worth seeking out, the role of corn beer and coca, and how to eat well in Cusco from a market stall to a tasting menu. Eating thoughtfully here is also one of the simplest ways to understand the region.

The foundations: potatoes, corn and ancient grains

The Andes are the homeland of the potato, and Peru cultivates several thousand native varieties in colours, shapes and textures unknown to most of the world. A traditional preservation method, chuño, freeze-dries potatoes over successive cold nights and warm days — an ancient response to altitude that let Andean communities store food for years.

Corn is the other pillar, grown in the valley in large-kernelled varieties and eaten boiled, toasted as cancha, or fermented. Quinoa, kañiwa and the tall grain kiwicha — all high-protein crops adapted to thin air and poor soil — round out a larder that sustained the Inca Empire and is now prized worldwide.

Dishes to seek out

Some Cusqueñan dishes are unmissable. Cuy, or guinea pig, is the most traditional festive meat, raised in highland kitchens for millennia and still served roasted on special occasions. Alpaca appears as steaks and skewers — lean, mild and increasingly on smart menus. Trout from highland rivers and lakes is a reliable everyday pleasure.

Look too for lomo saltado, the beloved beef stir-fry that shows the Chinese influence in Peruvian cooking; rocoto relleno, a stuffed hot pepper; and soups such as the hearty chairo. And although ceviche belongs to the coast, you will find good versions in Cusco — a reminder that Peruvian cuisine flows between sea, mountain and jungle.

Pachamanca: cooking with the earth

The most ceremonial way to eat in the Andes is the pachamanca, an earth oven whose name joins the Quechua words for earth and pot. Stones are heated in a fire, layered into a pit with meats, potatoes, corn, beans and aromatic herbs, then buried to cook slowly underground.

A pachamanca is as much a gathering as a meal, often tied to harvest or celebration and prepared communally over several hours. Where a journey includes one, it is worth the wait — the food emerges smoky and tender, and the ritual itself, an offering set into the soil, expresses the Andean bond with Pachamama, the earth.

Drinking: chicha, coca and pisco

Chicha de jora, a mildly alcoholic beer brewed from fermented corn, is the ancient social drink of the Andes; in valley villages a red flag or balloon on a pole still marks a house selling it. There is also a non-alcoholic chicha morada, a deep-purple cordial made from boiled purple corn with fruit and spice — refreshing and easy to like.

Coca tea, the mild leaf infusion, is offered everywhere and is a gentle aid to the altitude. For something stronger, pisco — the grape brandy that Peru and Chile both claim — is the national spirit, most famously shaken into a pisco sour. At 3,400 metres, though, go easy on alcohol, especially in your first days.

Where to eat, from market to tasting menu

Cusco’s San Pedro market is the place to eat like a local: stalls of fresh juice, soups and set lunches, and a fine, low-pressure introduction to the produce of the region. For refined cooking, the city has serious restaurants — Chicha, the Cusco kitchen of the chef Gastón Acurio, and the elegant tasting room MAP Café among them — that reinterpret Andean ingredients with modern technique.

On the Andes to Antarctica journey, meals are treated as part of the destination rather than a pause from it: a market breakfast in Cusco, trout in the Sacred Valley, perhaps a pachamanca in a valley village. By the time you reach Machu Picchu you will have eaten your way through the highland larder, and understood the region a little better for it.