For the ancient inhabitants of Campeche, as well as those of the rest of the Maya region, corn was the basis of their nourishment. They also ate beans and some vegetables and completed their diet with the meat of certain animals that they could hunt. There was also never a lack of fish and seafood among them: crayfish, snails, octopus, dogfish, sierra and groupers are just some of a large list.
Today Campeche’s cuisine is a combination of the regional products and food introduced to America by the Europeans. The wide variety includes seafood, bread, panuchos (cornmeal cakes), empanadas (turnover pies), tamales and dogfish tacos, pickled vine shoots, crabs’ legs, the delicious papaché which grows in mangroves, and different recipes for octopus and calamari and a great variety of fish. During the Summer the moro crab can be found, and it is prepared in a variety of ways and considered as the king of crustaceans. Shrimp in the state of Campeche is considered the best and most valued in the country and several dishes can be prepared with giant shrimp, large shrimp, coast shrimp and the small shrimp also called by the experts "seven beards shrimp".
Concerning to non-seafood dishes the most famous are the filtered flour tamales filled with pork meat or with chicken meat with achiote sauce (a seed that grows all over the Yucatán Peninsula); the pibinal (tender cooked corn) and the corn tortillas with butter.
