Oriente & Amazon Food & Traditional Cuisine

Amazonian cooking in Ecuador is built on what the forest and the rivers provide, and it is simpler and less spiced than Andean food.

Yuca — cassava — is the staple, boiled, roasted, or fermented into chicha. Plantain is the other, in every form from green and fried to ripe and sweet.

River fish is the main protein: tilapia, bocachico, catfish and, on bigger rivers, the enormous paiche. Wrapped in a bijao leaf with palm heart and herbs and set on the coals, it is the region’s signature preparation.

Palm contributes heart of palm, fruit and the fat larvae that live in fallen trunks.

Lodges generally cook a blend of this and standard Ecuadorian food, and will arrange a traditional meal if asked.

Fruit is exceptional: arazá, borojo, cocoa pulp and half a dozen others that never leave the region.

Maito is the dish to eat here: fish, or chicken, or palm grubs, seasoned and wrapped in a bijao leaf, tied, and grilled directly on the embers so it steams in its own moisture. The leaf is opened at the table and the whole thing is eaten with yuca and plantain.

Chontacuro, the palm weevil grub, grilled on a skewer or in a maito. Fat, nutty and taken entirely seriously as food; trying one is a small rite of passage.

Chicha de yuca, the fermented cassava drink that is the region’s staple beverage.

Ayampaco, the Shuar version of a leaf parcel, with fish or chicken, palm heart and greens.

Caldo de bagre, a catfish soup with yuca and coriander.

Also: guayusa tea before dawn; grilled plantain in every form; and cocoa eaten fresh from the pod as white pulp around the beans, which tastes nothing like chocolate.

Chicha is central to hospitality. Traditionally the yuca was chewed and spat back into the pot so that saliva enzymes started the fermentation, and in many communities it still is. It is offered to guests and refusing outright is impolite; a small taste and thanks is the diplomatic course.

Guayusa is drunk communally before dawn. Families rise around three or four in the morning, sit around the fire drinking the leaf infusion, and tell and interpret the night’s dreams before the day starts. Several lodges offer the ceremony, and it is the real thing rather than a performance.

Markets in Tena, Puyo and Coca sell forest fruit, river fish and grubs alongside highland produce.

At a lodge, meals are set, communal and at fixed times; dietary needs must be flagged when booking.

Tipping guides and lodge staff separately at the end is customary.

No wine is made in the Ecuadorian Amazon — the climate is entirely wrong for vines — but the region has its own fermented tradition and one drink that has become an export.

Chicha de yuca is the everyday and ceremonial drink: cassava boiled, mashed, fermented in a covered trough for one to several days, and served in a painted mucawa bowl. Young chicha is barely alcoholic and slightly sour; left longer it becomes considerably stronger. It is food as much as drink, and a household’s supply is a measure of its hospitality.

Guayusa, a caffeinated holly leaf related to yerba mate, is grown in forest gardens and now sold internationally as an energy drink. The traditional use — a pre-dawn communal infusion — is quite different from the canned version.

Cacao from this region, particularly the fine-flavour nacional variety, is among the best in the world, and several community cooperatives now make chocolate on site.

Aguardiente from the highlands is drunk in the frontier towns.