What to Eat in Cuenca: Mote Pillo, Chancho Hornado, Locro de Papas & Convent Sweets

In the southern highlands of Azuay Province, every table centres on mote (large white hominy corn kernels boiled in wood-ash water until tender and peeled) alongside slow-roasted pork, native Andean potatoes, tree-tomato chili sauce (ají de tomate de árbol), and recipes preserved for centuries inside Cuenca's cloistered convents. Here is what to eat during your stay.

1. The Three Signature Mote Dishes & Market Hornado

• Mote Pillo, Mote Sucio & Mote Pata: Locals in Cuenca jokingly call themselves morlacos and eat hominy corn at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Order mote pillo, where fluffy white hominy is sautéed in a cast-iron skillet with butter, annatto seed (achiote), chopped white onion, garlic, milk, fresh farm cheese, and lightly scrambled eggs until creamy and golden; mote sucio ("dirty mote"), where the kernels are tossed in rich, dark pork-crackling drippings (mapahuira); or, during the February/March Carnival season, mote pata, a hearty soup of hominy, pork belly, chorizo, and toasted pumpkin-seed paste (pepucho).
• Chancho Hornado at Mercado 10 de Agosto & Mercado 9 de Octubre: Walk up to the second-floor food hall of Mercado 10 de Agosto on Calle Larga, where rows of whole wood-oven-roasted pigs (chancho hornado) gleam with amber, glass-crisp skin (cuero reventado). Vendors slice tender garlic-and-cumin-rubbed pork to order and serve it with a mound of warm mote, griddled potato-and-cheese cakes (llapingachos), and pickled red onion-and-tomato salad (encurtido).

2. Locro de Papas, Tamales Cuencanos, Corpus Christi Sweets & Agua de Pitimas

• Locro de Papas, Cuy Asado & Tamales Cuencanos: On cool mountain evenings, warm up with a clay bowl of locro de papas con queso y aguacate (velvety Andean potato soup thickened with mash and topped with cubes of fresh white cheese and ripe avocado) or a steamed tamal cuencano (yellow maize dough filled with pork, raisins, and hard-boiled egg, wrapped in fragrant achira leaves) paired with dripped coffee along Calle Simón Bolívar. For traditional spit-roasted guinea pig (cuy asado con papas), head to the family picanterías along Avenida Don Bosco.
• Dulce de Higos, Corpus Christi Confectionery & Carmelite Agua de Pitimas: For dessert, order dulce de higos con queso (whole black figs slow-simmered in spiced panela raw cane syrup and served with salty fresh cheese), browse the marzipan and coconut sweets (dulces de Corpus) sold around Parque Calderón, and buy a bottle of calming rose-petal and lemon-verbena agua de pitimas crafted by the nuns of the Monasterio del Carmen de la Asunción.