Honduras

🇭🇳Honduras

Anafre

Refried red beans and melting cheese kept hot in a clay pot over embers, with chorizo stirred through and fried tortilla wedges to dig in with.

🇭🇳Honduras

Atol Chuco

A thick Honduran corn drink made from fermented nixtamal, blended with cacao, cinnamon, and sugar, served warm.

🇭🇳Honduras

Baleada

A thick soft wheat tortilla folded once over refried red beans, crumbled hard cheese and a stripe of soured cream; the sencilla is those three things and nothing else.

🇭🇳Honduras

Candinga

Pork liver and offal diced small and stewed down with tomato, sweet pepper and annatto until dark and thick, eaten with rice or tortillas.

🇨🇴La Ceiba, Colombia

Casabe

A thin, crispy yuca flatbread of indigenous Amazonian origin, made from grated, pressed, and toasted bitter yuca. A staple accompaniment to fish and stews.

🇸🇻El Salvador

Casamiento

A Salvadoran rice and beans dish, a daily and essential staple

🇭🇳Honduras

Catrachitas

Crisp fried corn tortilla rounds spread with refried beans and buried under grated hard cheese, eaten as a snack or a party plate.

🇨🇺Cuba

Chicha de Piña

An Ecuadorian fermented pineapple peel drink with cinnamon and panela, a coastal and home classic.

🇭🇳Honduras

Chilindrinas

Honduran fried snacks of mashed ripe plantain and cheese, shaped into patties and fried until golden.

🇭🇳Honduras

Chismol

Chimol

Raw chopped tomato, onion, green pepper and coriander dressed with sour orange or lime, spooned onto grilled meat and beans.

🇧🇷Oriente (Amazonian Ecuador), Brazil

Chontaduro

A palm fruit native to the Colombian Pacific and Amazon, with orange-red skin and starchy yellow flesh. Eaten with salt or honey, a staple of Pacific cuisine. On Cali streets the boiled fruit is sold in paper bags with salt and lime (chontaduro con sal).

🇧🇿Northern Honduras, Belize

Conch Soup

Sopa de caracol

Queen conch simmered in coconut milk with green plantain, yuca and cilantro until the shellfish softens and the broth turns pale and sweet.

🇭🇳Western Honduras, Honduras

Copán Coffee

Café de Copán

Washed arabica from the western hills around Copán and Santa Bárbara, the region that supplies most of Honduras's specialty exports.

🇨🇷Costa Rica

Corn Drink

Atol de elote

A Guatemalan creamy, warm corn drink with milk, sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla

🇭🇳Honduras

Coyol en Miel

The small hard fruit of the coyol palm boiled slowly in cane syrup with cinnamon until the flesh softens and takes the sugar.

🇨🇷Costa Rica

Coyol Wine

Vino de coyol

Sap tapped from a felled coyol palm and left to ferment in the sun for hours into a cloudy, sweet-sour drink that keeps getting stronger.

🇭🇳Honduras

Encurtido

Cabbage, carrot, onion and jalapeño packed into vinegar with oregano, put on the table in a jar with everything fried.

🇭🇳Northern Honduras, Honduras

Gifiti

Garifuna bitters: roots, bark and herbs steeped in cane spirit for weeks until nearly black, drunk in shots as a tonic and a hangover cure.

🇨🇷Costa Rica

Grilled Meat

Carne Asada

Charcoal-grilled beef marinated with salt, garlic and lime — the celebratory asado plate of Central America, sliced thin and served with rice, beans, fried plantain, chimol and tortillas.

🇭🇳Honduras

Honduran Bean Soup

Sopa de frijoles

Red beans boiled with pork bone, sweet pepper and coriander into a loose soup, served with rice, avocado, cheese and tortillas.

🇭🇳Honduras

Honduran Enchiladas

Enchiladas hondureñas

A flat fried tortilla stacked with seasoned ground beef, shredded cabbage, tomato sauce, grated cheese and a slice of hard-boiled egg.

🇭🇳Honduras

Honduran Horchata

Horchata de morro

Ground morro seeds, rice, cacao, cinnamon and sesame steeped and strained into a thick, grainy, chocolate-flecked cold drink.

🇭🇳Honduras

Honduran Rosquillas

Rosquillas

Rings of maize masa worked with hard cheese and lard, baked in a wood oven until dry and brittle, and dunked in coffee.

🇭🇳Honduras

Honduran Tamale

Nacatamal hondureño

A large banana-leaf tamale of masa enriched with lard and annatto around pork, rice, potato, olives and capers, steamed for hours.

🇨🇷Costa Rica

Horchata

Horchata de morro

Drink made from ground morro seeds and rice with cinnamon, smooth and creamy, a traditional Costa Rican refreshing beverage.

🇭🇳Honduras

Macheteadas

Slabs of enriched dough slashed with a knife before frying so they open into ridges, then dusted with sugar or soaked in cane syrup.

🇭🇳Northern Honduras, Honduras

Machuca

Green plantain pounded in a wooden mortar into a dense mash and served in a bowl of coconut fish soup — the Garifuna version of fufu with a broth.

🇭🇳Western Honduras, Honduras

Marcala Coffee

Café de Marcala

High-altitude arabica from the La Paz highlands around Marcala, Honduras's first coffee denomination of origin, grown mostly on smallholdings.

🇨🇴Colombia

Mondongo

Sopa de mondongo

Tripe soup slow-cooked for hours with pork, corn, yuca and potato in a hogao-scented broth, served with rice, avocado, banana and arepa. In Bogotá it is the legendary "mondongo santafereño"; across Central America the same pot answers to sopa de mondongo.

🇭🇳Honduras

Montucas

Fresh young maize ground coarse, mixed with chicken or pork and sofrito, wrapped in the green corn husk and steamed.

🇭🇳Northern Honduras, Honduras

Pan de Coco

Garifuna bread enriched with fresh coconut milk and grated coconut, baked into dense small rounds and sold warm from baskets on the beach.

🇭🇳Honduras

Pastelitos de Carne

Honduran meat turnovers of golden, flaky pastry filled with seasoned ground beef, potatoes, and sometimes olives and raisins.

🇨🇷Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Pinol

Finely ground toasted white corn drink from Guanacaste, traditional and ancient, smooth and nutty, a Costa Rican indigenous specialty.

🇨🇷Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Pinolillo

Pinol Blanco

Corn and cocoa drink from Guanacaste, traditional and rustic, good balance of corn and cocoa, a Costa Rican beverage.

🇭🇳Honduras

Pollo Chuco (Pollo con Tajadas)

Honduran street food of fried chicken served over fried green plantain chips with cabbage slaw and a tangy sauce.

🇭🇳Honduras

Riguas

Salvadoran griddle cakes of fresh corn and cheese, wrapped in a corn husk and griddled until golden.