5 Best Restaurants in La Paz, Bolivia

Offering reliably delicious and slightly refined Bolivian cuisine, El Vagon del Sur is worth the trip to Zona Sur if you’re tempted by local dishes but not quite ready to delve into the market or the little side-street restaurants. Excellent service in a beautiful old house makes the extra expense worthwhile. Frequented by wealthy locals and a growing number of tourists, it fills up at both lunch and dinner, and reservations are particularly recommended on weekends. The best-loved dishes are the pique mixto with stewed beef, chorizo, and tongue, or the picante mixto, a taste of four traditional dishes from around the country. It's best to come here after your appetite becomes used to the altitude.

A longtime favorite for classy and authentic French cuisine, La Comédie is best known for all things duck, with the pâté and the confit the crowd favorites. The comfortable and intimate dining room creates a festive mood with original decor that was intended to entertain, often with tongue firmly in cheek. Don't miss the French onion soup.

Although the decor doesn’t do much to raise this restaurant above a typical hotel restaurant, the guys in the kitchen are extremely deft hands on the grill and make some of the best meat in town for a very reasonable price. The best time to go is on Sunday, when they serve traditional dishes like sajta, a kind of chicken stew, and Cochabamba’s most famous dish, silpancho, thinly cut and lightly breaded fried steak, served on a bed of rice and fried potatoes, and topped with an egg and a spicy mix of tomato and locoto peppers.

This sister restaurant to the one in the center of town offers the same high-quality food as the original, but in a more relaxed atmosphere. Still relatively new, Paladar has become a firm favorite in Zona Sur with everyone from businessmen to tourists, particularly for the lunch special. A good selection of local craft beers and excellent coffee (from Roaster Boutique a few blocks down) makes a perfect counterpoint to a selection of superbly made Brazilian dishes. Don't miss the coxinhas de pollo, fried chicken nuggets, and, of course, the star, the feijoada (traditional Brazilian stew), a feast for two people.

Step down off the street into a rather bizarre world of Dalian decor (yeah, that’s no typo in the name) and Italo-Andean fusion dining that has won loads of followers over the years. This is a date-night hot spot: the food is delicious, the space is intimate and candlelit, and the menu alone will keep you chatting all evening. Although primarily Italian focused, there are little tastes from all over Europe and occasionally even farther abroad. All the pastas are homemade, and particularly good are the stuffed pastas, like the garam masala ravioli or locally inspired charquekan sorrentinos. The presentation is modern, and in accordance, the plate size is smaller and the prices are higher than the Bolivian average, but it's definitely a worthwhile treat. Reservations are recommended on weekends.