Many Belizean dishes in San Ignacio are inspired ✨ by neighboring countries Guatemala 🇬🇹 & El Salvador 🇸🇻 making Belizean cuisine an interesting fusion.
As a local that's lived in San Ignacio for a couple of years, I can confirm that the street food here is one of the best in the country.
Here's a list of my favorite places to eat: 👇
Street Food
San Ignacio Market
- $2.00 USD
The San Ignacio market is one of the best market's in the entire country. It's filled with food vendors that cook traditional dishes and serve them just like locals eat them at home. Local dishes include rice & beans, tamales, salbutes, panades, pupusas, fresh juices, coconut water, baked goods and other dishes.
- 🏆 What To Try: Mixed pupusas
- 🌱 Vegan Option: Veggie burrito
Pupuseria La Exquisita
- $1.50 USD
The menu here is far more than just pupusas. They sell burritos, panades, salbutes and other fried food. It's cheap and tasty. The only caveat is that it opens at night. The food is made quickly right in front of you.
- 🏆 What To Try: Mixed pupusas
- 🌱 Vegan Option: Fry jacks with beans
Garnaches Lady
- $0.50 USD
Garnaches is a circular tortilla chip with beans, cheese, and hot pepper sauce. It's remarkably filling and if you are avoiding dairy, you can opt to leave out the cheese. The vendor comes out at night only. You can catch her in front of the Tai San Chinese Store. This is another place a friend recommended me when I moved to San Ignacio Town. Locals love partying and drinking on weekends and then have a craving for tasty cheap food.
- 🏆 What To Try: Regular garnaches
- 🌱 Vegan Option: Garnaches without cheese
Restaurants
Restaurante Típico Salvadoreños
- $4.00 USD
Because of my intimate love affair with pupusas, my friends recommended me this food spot. Their specialty is pupusas, which are small tortilla-looking food that is packed with one of a combo of these fillings: beans, cheese, mora, eggplant chipilín, or meat.
- 🏆 What To Try: Garlic pupusas
- 🌱 Vegan Option: Chipilín pupusas
Cenaida's
- $4.00 USD
Cenaida's is a special little food joint found in center of town. It's always filled with local people because the food is good and cheap. They have a wide range of dishes on their menu including specials for the day. The rice & beans dish has a ton of flavor since it's cooked with coconut milk over a fire heart, which is the traditional way of preparing it.
- 🏆 What To Try: Grilled fish
- 🌱 Vegan Option: Rice & beans with veggies
Mike's Kitchen
- $2.50 USD
While the local's recommend foreigners to eat at Pop's Restaurant, Mike's kitchen is where all the locals go for breakfast. It's located right in front of the San Ignacio Market beside Lydia's. For breakfast, they offer beans, eggs and fry jacks. And for lunch the offer the traditional Belizean rice & beans. Nothing fancy, but the flavors are rich.
- 🏆 What To Try: Belizean breakfast
- 🌱 Vegan Option: Roast veggies with fry jacks
Ko-ox Ha-nah
- $5.00 USD
Ko-ox Ha-nah means let's go eat in Mayan language. It's one of the most popular spots in San Ignacio but for a good reason. It's centrally located, and they offer fair prices.
- 🏆 What To Try: Special of the day
- 🌱 Vegan Option: Veggie burrito
Authentic Flavors
- $5.00 USD
This restaurant is owned by a lovely Garifuna lady. Her dishes are all locally-inspired with an emphasis on Garifuna cuisine. The plates include ingredients like coconut milk, curry, plantains and cassava.
- 🏆 What To Try: Hudut
- 🌱 Vegan Option: Vegetarian salbutes
Guava Limb
- $16.00 USD
This is both a restaurant and a café. The owners of this cafe also own a luxurious lodge called Chaa Creek. The food here is pricier than usual since they offer farm-to-table dining. They also serve good coffee and offer oven-made pizza now.
- 🏆 What To Try: Coconut Shrimp
- 🌱 Vegan Option: Gado Gado
Cafes
The Daily Grind
- $3.50 USD
After visiting most cafés in San Ignacio, I found out a new one called The Daily Grind opening up very close to the town center. It's literally 6 minutes away from the town center by foot.
The café is relatively small but has a solid menu with espressos, americanos, lattes, teas and even matcha. The vibe and aesthetics is chill and quiet. While you don't have a lot of seating options it's comfortable with air conditioning especially on hot days.
An Americano runs you $3.25 USD.
- 🏆 What To Try: Matcha Coconut
- 🌱 Vegan Option: None available
Creole Bread Lady
- $1.00 USD
Creole bread is one of the tastiest bread in Belize. The secret sauce is in the coconut milk. From my experience, most of the vendors selling creole bread are creole moms selling to put their kids through high school or college. You'll find many vendors along the highway as well as one popular vendor on the main street selling creole bread and other homemade treats like sweet bread, powder bun and coconut crusts. Each bread cost around $0.50 USD.
- 🏆 What To Try: Creole bread
- 🌱 Vegan Option: Coconut crust
Choco Banana Lady
- $0.75 USD
This is a small shop that I found while walking the streets of Santa Elena one day. They sell chocolate-covered, frozen bananas with nuts on top. It sounds simple, but it's delicious. As Belizean kids, we ate choco banana after school. Also note that this store isn't on the maps so do your best to look around the area I pinned on the map. The store is a small wooden structure in front of a school called St. Ignatius High School.
- 🏆 What To Try: Chocobanana with nuts
New French Bakery
- $2.50 USD
This small bakery is located just in front of the San Ignacio Market. It's the perfect place to have a coffee and pastry before starting kicking off your daily adventure around town. You can also people watch early in the morning if that's your thing. While I'm not a bread connoisseur of any sort, I found the cinnamon roll to be exquisite, the croissant could have been way better though. Coffee is also available as self service at $1.00 USD. What else can you ask for from a tiny bakery in the middle of Central America?
- 🏆 What To Try: Cinnamon roll
The Ice Cream Shoppe
- $2.50 USD
Ice Cream Shoppe is centrally located and has a few flavors that are local to the fruits in Belize. Flavors are updated frequently so you'll have no problem with variety here. They also normally carry an option that doesn't have milk included - a type of sorbet.
- 🏆 What To Try: Local fruit flavor
- 🌱 Vegan Option: Dairy-free option
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