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Travel guide · Food & drink

What to eat in Salta

By Pablo Pérez Sancho, tour guide in Salta · Updated November 2026

Salta's food is Andean and Spanish at once: corn, squash, potatoes and chilli with beef, pork and goat. The classics are the empanada salteña, locro, humitas and tamales, quesillo cheese with cayote jam, and the white wine Torrontés, which grows in the high vineyards of Cafayate.

Empanadas
Hand-cut beef, potato, egg and pimentón; baked or fried
Stews
Locro, with corn, white beans and squash
In corn husks
Humitas and tamales
Dessert
Quesillo with cayote jam and walnuts
Wine
Torrontés, the flagship white
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Red peppers drying in the sun near Cachi, for pimentón
Red peppers drying in the sun near Cachi, for pimentón

What is an empanada salteña?

A small turnover filled with lean beef cut by hand with a knife, potato, spring onion, hard-boiled egg, pepper and onion, seasoned with pimentón del valle. It is baked in a clay oven or fried in beef fat. Salta celebrates the Día de la Empanada Salteña every 4 April. Peppers for the pimentón are grown and sun-dried around Cachi, Molinos, Cafayate and Angastaco.

What is locro?

A slow-cooked stew of Andean origin made with corn, white beans and squash. In Salta it usually includes beef, bacon and chorizo, and it is finished with a spoonful of melted fat with pimentón and chives. It simmers for hours.

What are humitas and tamales?

Both are made from corn dough wrapped in the corn husk and boiled; you do not eat the husk. A humita has cheese, basil, squash and onion, and can be savoury or sweet, with no meat. A tamal is more strongly spiced and has beef, pork or charqui (dried meat). The Fiesta Nacional del Tamal is held every July in Chicoana. Traditional recipes sauté the onion in beef fat, so ask if you do not eat meat.

What is quesillo?

A fresh, stretched-curd cheese from the Calchaquí Valleys and the Lerma Valley, made from cow or goat milk and sold in flat sheets. It is served as dessert with honey, cane honey, or cayote jam and walnuts. Goat cheese, in many varieties, is also a regional product.

What meats should I try?

Cabrito (kid goat) cooked over wood and llama are traditional. In the countryside there is also the guatía, a mix of cuts of meat wrapped in hide and cooked underground; the town of El Jardín holds a festival for it every March.

What do I drink?

Torrontés is the flagship white, with fruity aromas, grown in the high vineyards around Cafayate. Malbec, Cabernet Franc, Tannat and other reds are also made in the province. Chicha, a mild fermented corn drink, is usually home-made and served at traditional festivals, and the Fiesta Nacional de la Chicha is in La Caldera every March.

What sweets are typical?

Dulce de cayote, a squash jam, is served with walnuts, with quesillo or inside small empanadillas eaten cold. There are also alfeñiques, candies made from cane honey, and the turrón salteño, sold mostly in the cold months.

Sources: Wikipedia, Gastronomía de Salta: empanada, locro, tamal, humita, quesillo, guatía, chicha, cayote, pimentón, turrón and wines. Wikipedia, Locro and Humita. Dietary note on beef fat is from the same article. Meals and dietary needs: see our FAQ.

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Meals are paid separately on Pablo's trips. Tell him in advance about dietary needs, and he plans around them.

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