7 Best Places to Eat in La Paz
7 Best Places to Eat in La Paz, Bolivia
La Paz cooking blends Spanish, African, and Aymara influences into a menu that’s genuinely underrated. Here’s where to eat, from street stalls to a sit-down table.
Street food
1. Salteñas. The city’s signature snack: a juicy, slightly sweet pastry filled with meat, potatoes, and peas. Strictly a mid-morning food, sold roughly 9-11am and typically sold out by noon, so don’t plan on them for lunch.
2. Anticuchos. Grilled beef-heart skewers, sold from street carts after dark for around 15 BOB, usually with a side of potato and corn.
3. Pique macho. A big, shareable platter of fried beef, sausage, fries, egg, and onion, built for sharing after a long day of sightseeing.
Markets
4. Mercado Lanza. The city’s best cheap-eats hub: a food court and surrounding stalls, many run by cholitas, serving soups and market plates at local prices. This is where to try chairo, fricasé, or sajta de pollo if you haven’t already.
Restaurants
5. Ali Pacha. Bolivia’s first fine-dining vegan and vegetarian restaurant, on Calle Colón, built around Andean ingredients done with real technique.
6. Popular Cocina Boliviana. A casual, modern-Bolivian spot near Iglesia de San Francisco, known for a first-come, prix-fixe format that fills up fast.
7. Propiedad Pública. A farm-to-table restaurant in San Miguel, in the lower, warmer Zona Sur, worth the trip out for a more relaxed sit-down meal.
One honest note: Gustu, the Noma-founder restaurant that put La Paz’s fine-dining scene on the map, closed in 2025. It’s worth knowing as part of the city’s food history, but it’s no longer a current recommendation.
Andean staples and drinks worth trying
Beyond the street food and restaurants above, a few dishes and drinks round out the city’s food scene. Chairo, fricasé, and sajta de pollo are the classic Andean soups and stews you’ll see on almost every casual menu, all built around potato, corn, and either pork or chicken. Chuño and tunta, freeze-dried potatoes preserved using a centuries-old high-altitude technique, show up as a side or a thickener in soups, and llama meat itself appears grilled, stewed, or dried as ch’arki. For a morning drink, api con pastel pairs a warm purple-corn beverage with a fried pastry, a good alternative to salteñas if you’re out early. In the evening, singani, Bolivia’s national grape spirit, is usually served as a chuflay, mixed with ginger ale, while Paceña, the local lager, is the easy default beer at almost any restaurant or bar in the city.
A few practical points: tap water isn’t safe to drink anywhere in Bolivia, so stick to bottled or filtered; tipping around 10% is standard at sit-down restaurants; and cash still rules at markets and street stalls, so keep small bills on hand.
Read more: see our things to do in La Paz guide for where to work off the pique macho.