What is Panamanian food?
Panamanian cuisine sits at a crossroads — literally. Panama has been a transit point for every major culture that passed through the Americas: Spanish colonisers, African enslaved peoples, Indigenous Kuna and Guna Yala communities, Chinese and West Indian canal workers, North American engineers, Middle Eastern merchants. The food reflects all of it.
At its core, Panamanian cooking is built on rice, beans, plantains, and protein — a framework shared with much of Latin America but executed with Panama's particular set of local influences: the Pacific seafood tradition, the Azuero beef culture, the Caribbean spice inheritance, the canal-era Chinese influence that shows up in unexpected corners of the cuisine. The result is a food culture that is comforting, abundant, and often underestimated by visitors who arrive expecting something flashier.
Casco Viejo is one of the best places in Panama City to eat across the full spectrum — from market ceviche at $2 to Manolo Caracol's legendary twelve-course tasting menu built from that morning's market ingredients. This guide covers the dishes you need to know before you arrive.
The essential Panamanian dishes
Sancocho is Panama's national dish and one of the most satisfying bowls of soup you will eat anywhere in Latin America. It is a slow-cooked chicken stew with yuca (cassava), otoe (taro root), and culantro — a herb that looks like a long flat leaf and tastes like an intensified version of coriander. The broth is clear, deeply flavoured, and seasoned with ají chombo (Scotch bonnet pepper) added at the table rather than cooked in.
Sancocho is traditionally eaten for Sunday lunch, as a hangover cure, and at virtually every family celebration. You will find it at every Panamanian restaurant. Do not leave without trying it.
Panamanian ceviche is different from Peruvian ceviche. It is finely diced — almost minced — corvina (white sea bass) cured for longer in lime juice and mixed with white onion, celery, and ají chombo. The texture is softer, the flavour more integrated, the heat more restrained. It is served in a plastic cup with crackers and costs $1.50–$3 from a street vendor or market stall.
The ceviche at Mercado de Mariscos (the fish market, 5 minutes from Casco Viejo) is considered the best in Panama City. Arrive before noon when the corvina is freshest. Our food tasting tour includes a market stop here.
Ropa vieja — literally "old clothes" — is shredded beef slow-cooked in a tomato-based sauce with onion, bell pepper, garlic, and herbs until it falls apart into fibres that look, romantically, like torn fabric. It is served with white rice and either fried plantains or a salad. The Panamanian version has more tomato and less spice than the Cuban interpretation, and is almost always cooked with beer in the braising liquid.
Ropa vieja is the dish that Panamanian households make when they want to feed many people at low cost with maximum satisfaction. It appears on virtually every fondita (local lunch spot) menu and is almost always excellent.
Patacones are green plantains sliced thick, fried once until soft, smashed flat, then fried again until golden and crisp. The result is something like a cross between a potato chip and a corn tortilla — starchy, satisfying, with a slight sweetness from the plantain that makes them pair well with everything from ceviche to ropa vieja to cold beer. They appear alongside almost every main dish in Panama.
The sweet equivalent — tajadas — are made from ripe yellow plantains, sliced thin and fried soft. Entirely different experience, equally essential. If you're offered the choice, try both.
The Panamanian version of arroz con pollo uses culantro and a technique of cooking the chicken pieces directly in the rice so the fat and flavour absorb into every grain. It is deeply yellow from achiote (annatto seed), fragrant, and extraordinarily comforting. Most Panamanian children are raised on this dish. It remains the lunch of choice for most of the country's working population most days of the week.
Panamanian breakfast foods
The Panamanian breakfast is one of the great underrated meals in Latin America. It typically includes some combination of the following:
Hojaldres are the Panamanian breakfast bread — a simple fried dough made from flour, water, salt, and baking powder, cooked in oil until puffed and golden. They are soft inside, slightly crisp outside, and almost always served alongside eggs, cheese, or carimanolas (yuca fritters stuffed with ground beef). The name comes from the Spanish word for pastry layers, though hojaldres have no actual layers — they are a direct descendent of simple colonial fry bread.
You will find hojaldres at every Panamanian breakfast spot. They are best eaten within minutes of being fried.
Breakfast in Casco Viejo: The neighbourhood's best morning spots are Casa Sucre (for a refined colonial-house experience), Café Coca Cola on Plaza Santa Ana (old-school Panamanian breakfast since 1875), and the market stalls near the entrance to Casco for the most authentic working-class desayuno. See our full breakfast guide.
Street food worth knowing
- Carimanolas — torpedo-shaped yuca fritters stuffed with seasoned ground beef. Sold from carts in the morning. $0.50–1 each.
- Empanadas — corn pastry stuffed with meat or cheese, fried or baked. Available everywhere.
- Raspados — shaved ice with fruit syrup. Essential in the heat. Every plaza in Casco has a vendor.
- Chicheme — a cold drink made from ground corn, milk, and vanilla. Sweet, thick, deeply Panamanian. Ask for it at local cafés.
- Tamales panameños — unlike Mexican tamales, Panamanian tamales are wrapped in banana leaf, filled with rice, chicken, olives, and capers, and steamed. Served at Christmas and family celebrations but available year-round at markets.
What to drink in Panama
Seco con leche is the national cocktail — Seco Herrerano (Panama's sugarcane spirit) poured over ice with cold milk. Simple, powerful, and genuinely Panamanian. Balboa and Panama are the two local lagers; cold, light, excellent with ceviche. Chichita is a local mixed drink brand — ubiquitous, cheap, consumed in large quantities at outdoor events.
For non-alcoholic options: fresh fruit juices (jugos naturales) are available everywhere and Panama's tropical fruit selection — maracuyá (passion fruit), guanábana (soursop), cas (a tart guava relative) — makes for exceptional juice. Geisha coffee from the Boquete highlands is world-class and available at specialist cafés in Casco Viejo — see our Geisha coffee guide for where to drink it.
Where to eat in Casco Viejo
For the full picture, see our complete restaurant guide. But in brief:
- Manolo Caracol — the most celebrated restaurant in Casco Viejo. No menu, daily tasting courses built from market ingredients. Book well in advance.
- Casa Sucre — colonial courtyard setting, excellent modern Panamanian food, strong cocktail programme. Reliable for both lunch and dinner.
- Donde José — a fixed-price tasting menu focused on Panamanian ingredients. Small, personal, reservation required.
- Café Coca Cola — Plaza Santa Ana. Established 1875. This is where you eat hojaldres and eggs at 7am alongside Panamanian taxi drivers and retired men reading the newspaper. Not fancy; essential.
- Mercado de Mariscos — 5 minutes from Casco Viejo, the fish market's upstairs restaurant is where you eat ceviche and whole fried fish for under $10. Go before noon.
Taste Panamanian food with a local guide
Our food tasting tour takes you through Casco Viejo's markets, street stalls, and hidden restaurants — six stops, six tastings, full cultural context. The fastest way to eat like a local on your first day.
Book the Food Tour →