Paraguay’s Vori Vori Voted World’s Best Dish
The Weekly Post | 15.12.25
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Vori Nice
Vori vori, Paraguay’s classic chicken-and-cornmeal stew, is officially the tastiest dish on the planet. That’s at least according to TasteAtlas, an online food guide and crowd-sourced culinary ranking.
“We celebrate with enormous joy that our traditional dish has been recognised by Taste Atlas as the world Number 1,” said tourism minister Angie Duarte, describing the accolade as “a homage to cuisine made with Paraguayan soul, history and flavour.”
Vori vori, wrote Paraguay’s president Santiago Peña, is “an extraordinary dish that everyone should try. It’s not for nothing that it’s the best in the world.”
For 2026, vori vori achieved the highest average rating – 4.64 out of 5 – from over 450,000 online voters, beating 11,781 dishes including Pizza Napoletana (2) and Central Texas-Style Barbecue (11).
The news, announced on December 6, only confirms what locals already know. The combination of flavour and tradition – the dish dates back centuries, with the Spanish word for the cheese-and-cornmeal bolas becoming vori vori in Guaraní – makes the ancestral broth the perfect comfort food for a chilly winter’s day (or even a scorching summer one).
TasteAtlas also polled categories including Best Cheese (Graviera Naxou; Greece), Best Food City (Naples), and Best Savory Pastry (Empanadas Tucumanas, Argentina). It insists that its ranking is “powered by algorithms that rigorously filter out bots and nationalistic voting brigades, ensuring pure democratic math: no jury, no magic.”
THE POST TAKE:
While the TasteAtlas rankings may not be rigged exactly, there does seem to be an incumbency advantage at work. Vori vori is fresh from a two-year winning streak as the TasteAtlas best soup in the world – a position jointly occupied by Indonesia’s creamy coconut-and-beef broth Soto Betawi.
And if Paraguayan gastronomy really has won over a global public, it’s yet to convince the experts.
Earlier this month, the annual World’s 50 Best Restaurants was released, alongside sub-categories for North America and Latin America. The ranking – decided by 1,000 anonymous gourmands, and audited for fairness by consulting firm Deloitte – is widely considered the gold-standard for rating national cuisines: surpassing even the Michelin guides, which cover relatively few countries.
Latin America’s 50 Best was topped by El Chato in Bogotá (1) and Kjolle in Lima (2). Entries from all of Paraguay’s neighbours featured – including Don Julio in Buenos Aires (3), Tuju in São Paulo (8) and newcomer Arami in La Paz, Bolivia (48) – as well as Ecuador, Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, Chile, and Costa Rica.
But although Cocina Clandestina, Pakuri, and Tierra Colorada have featured on the 50 Best “discovery” list – a kind of honourable mention – and the latter clinched number 47 in 2016, no Paraguayan restaurant has made the big leagues in recent years.
Leading lights in Paraguay’s foodie ecosystem – marshalled by Arami O’Hara of the O’Hara culinary school – are seeking to change this, the Post can reveal. Marcela Baruch, a Uruguayan food writer and LatAm vice chair for 50 Best, visited in August to sample some of Asunción’s top spots. Culture Minister Adriana Ortiz recently convened a meeting of restauranteurs to discuss how Paraguay can break into the ranking, which scores locales on food, atmosphere, service, and concept.
These last two will require serious investment in staff training, as well as building connections with rural and Indigenous suppliers in the model of Central in Lima and Mil near Cusco. Paraguayan authorities would also have to stump up tens of thousands of dollars to fly in 50 Best jurors, lodge them in fancy hotels, and set up curated dining itineraries: the kind of active culinary diplomacy that has underpinned the rise of Peru and Mexico as global foodie destinations.
Given that public money is tight, the juice may not be worth the squeeze. And many Paraguayans will tell you that the best national cuisine isn’t to be found in fine dining establishments, but out in the countryside: the tender vacío (flank steak) or chipa guazú corncake straight out the tatakuá (mud-brick oven) at their grandma’s house; the coiled chorizo misionero sizzling on a roadside grill; a hearty chupín de surubí stew made from a catfish freshly plucked from the Río Paraná.
Perhaps there is a way forward that harnesses that affection for traditional dishes and perfects them for local and international diners alike. Táva, a stylish but laid-back diner in el centro, is now offering a delicious and affordable vori vori on its lunchtime menu. Pakuri recently unveiled a fusion-style VoriRamen. Óga, the Post understands, will soon add the traditional soup to its menu of “non-traditional Paraguayan cuisine”. Sometimes the answer is to give the people what they want.
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Scandal grows over meeting with judges · GDP growth to double LatAm average · Why is the dollar sliding? · Navidad de flor de coco
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POLITICS
Was Cartes there?
Questions are mounting over a secretive meeting between six of Paraguay’s nine Supreme Court justices, President Santiago Peña, and – according to some sources – ex-president Horacio Cartes. The encounter, first reported by El Observador, was not made public. A group of lawyers have formally filed a petition for all visits to the presidential residence to be officially registered: something the Peña administration, despite repeated scandals, has refused on national security grounds.
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