The landmark Mercado del Puerto was born in 1868 as a marketplace, but over the years it slowly became almost entirely filled with competing parrillas. One of them, El Palenque, has been a benchmark of service and quality in Montevideo for more than 60 years. The standout parrilla was founded by Don Emilio Portela, and today it’s run by his children and grandchildren. The restaurant has several areas: a countertop surrounding the grill that offers a more informal experience, two dining rooms decked out with white tablecloths, and sidewalk seating. Though El Palenque is known for the quality of its beef, the menu also remains faithful to the Spanish heritage of the founding family, offering plenty of grilled octopus, fish, and shellfish. — Marcela Baruch

Founded by Colombians Ana María Quintana and Julián Medina, Sometimes Sunday mixes Asian flavors with smoked foods inspired by the American South, and offers an especially great brunch. The small, minimal space, on pedestrian street Pérez Castellano, contains a cafeteria, cocktail bar, and open kitchen. Medina and Quintana import coffee from Nariño in Colombia and roast it together with Antonio Gutiérrez and the owners of fellow brunch spot Café Gourmand. The menu highlights include eggs, green curry, roasted grapefruit with sugar and chile, and a pulled pork sandwich with 12-hour smoked meat. Along with coffee, order some local craft beer or the bloody mary. — MB

Trained in the kitchens of Mallorca and the United States, chef Roberto Connio had the audacity to set up a seafood-focused restaurant just a few meters from the Mercado del Puerto, Montevideo’s temple of meat. He serves whole fish cooked on the grill or pan, bones and all; “the bones,” Connio says, “are part of the flavor.” The daily chalkboard menu may list grilled anchovies, fried silverside, clams from La Coronilla, grilled octopus, piquillo peppers stuffed with brandade, or a tortilla. The average Uruguayan eats only 15 pounds of fish per year (versus 220 of red meat), so Es Mercat’s customers are mostly foreigners and Spanish expats. Connio also runs the more casual El Otro Es Mercat with his son Facundo. — MB

Arrive before 1 p.m. or after 2:30 p.m. to snag a bar stool at this small restaurant, since the place fills up at lunchtime with office workers and tourists. The daily menu is made up of just a handful of dishes, which might include paprika chicken with truffled polenta and dried tomato pesto, or the classic Uruguayan steak sandwich, the chivito, prepared with upgraded ingredients like filet mignon, arugula, coriander chimichurri, and a poached egg, and served deconstructed on a plate rather than a roll. Desserts, like a caramelized pear tart with pink pepper and creme brulee ice cream, are always inventive. — NMW

Sofía Kim came from South Korea to join her husband Duk Gyu a decade ago. Together they opened Arariyo, a minimal restaurant featuring Korean home cooking in the Old City, very near the port. For years only Koreans visited them, but tourists and locals slowly came along. Kim cooks what she learned from her mother and mother-in-law in a simple open kitchen, including excellent kimchi soup, mandu, noodle soup, fried rice, and truly great banchan. During the pandemic, the couple’s son Martín began teaching social media followers the family’s recipes, and he has joined his mother in the kitchen. — MB

A gorgeous, high-ceilinged bookstore with colorful tiled floors forms the entrance to this charming cafe, tailor-made for a quiet midmorning coffee and snack or a late afternoon craft beer (note that tables fill up rapidly at lunchtime). The simple menu includes spinach tarts, soups, and sandwiches on bread that is dense and moist (still a rarity in a city that prefers the airy baguette), plus a generous selection of desserts, like carrot cake and brownies. The owners are also behind another beautiful cafe space, Cultural Alfabeta, and the kitchen of the new five-star Hotel Montevideo. — NMW

While the craft beer scene in Montevideo is on the rise, a decent cocktail can still be hard to find. Baker’s, on an unremarkable corner in the mostly residential Cordón neighborhood, makes the best mixed drinks in town and fills up with a hip young crowd almost every night (you can reserve a table in advance, though). The Grito de Ascencio, a gin concoction with grapefruit juice, tonic, cucumber, and bitters, and the Me Mataste, with Aperol, white wine, ginger syrup, and passionfruit, are two standouts. The owners just opened a second bar, which goes by the same name, in Pocitos. — NMW

Belén Valverde and Matias de los Santos fell in love in Punta del Este, moved to Spain and then Mexico, until finally they were invited to join Mexican chef Rosio Sanchez at Hija de Sánchez in Copenhagen. Two years later, during the pandemic, the young couple decided to return to Montevideo (Matías says they missed the taste of lime, cilantro, and Mexican spices in Europe). They opened La Milpa, a fun small taquería inside the Mercado Ferrando food hall, where you should try the al pastor and barbecue tacos, and their house-made hot sauces and tortillas. — MB

Manuel González Arnao, Santiago Perdomo, Diego Fernández, and Alfonso Cretenze met in the kitchen at Montevideo’s bar El Mingus. After years working and traveling abroad together, they decided to open a little corner bar in the Cordón neighborhood, at the time a sleepy area far from the most popular restaurants in the city. There they stood out from the beginning, with tables made from upside-down barrels and a tiny open kitchen. The space was so basic that the quartet called it De Morondanga (“minimal” in local slang). The stuffed mushrooms, prawns from Valizas (a fishing village on the Uruguayan coast), and clams from La Coronilla are the most famous dishes on the menu. All the food is served tapas-style, and dinner costs about $25 per person. In 2021 they expanded to a second restaurant across the street with a larger dining room and more kitchen space, called Nueva Esquina (“New Corner”). They don’t do reservations, so it’s best to get there early around 7 p.m. when they open. — MB

Argentine by birth and Uruguayan by adoption, Irene Delponte trained as a film producer, but with the birth of her first son, she changed careers entirely. “Suddenly I started cooking and taking photos. This was when Instagram was used only on iPhones, and the community was much smaller,” she says. Delponte trained in pastry at the Cordon Bleu institute in Lima and began to make traditional sweets with her own flair, gaining fans online for her alfajor absolutely stuffed with dulce de leche and her version of a Snickers bar. More recently she’s experimented with pate of winter fruits and miso-infused salty caramel and dulce de leche. Her sweets are found in some bars and cafes in Montevideo, but she mainly sells them through social media and at food festivals. — MB

Since June 2018, Savarin has been giving a masterclass in pairing French technique with Uruguayan produce in Montevideo. This is the first restaurant from chef José Pedro Cobas and his wife, patissiere Sofia Rozas, who met while working at Relais & Châteaux restaurant La Bourgogne in glitzy Punta del Este. Their work with seasonal products is impeccable, with a special focus on vegetables (if you happen to visit in spring, don’t miss the asparagus and artichoke preparations). The restaurant also offers a deservedly famous dish of Uruguayan lamb braised with grilled seasonal vegetables, though the vegetable curry with coconut milk sauce and fish offerings (sourced from an artisanal fishery) are also great. The dining room is simple, and in warm weather you can also enjoy the patio surrounded by flowers and greenery. — MB

The sourdough bread boom arrived in Uruguay before COVID-19 but escalated (in tandem with the rest of the world) quickly afterwards. Now you can get a great loaf at a handful of great bakeries around town, but head to Bertha also for fluffy medialunas, brioche cinnamon buns, and mortadella sandwiches. Neither of the owners, Agustina Rodríguez and Virginia Olij, are career chefs, but they began Bertha as a side project and soon had a hit on their hands, eventually leading to a space in Pocitos where diners could eat in. — MB

The ultimate neighborhood parrilla, this corner spot is popular with locals and a few tourists who have sniffed out its top-notch cuts of beef and house-made chimichurri. The smiling servers deliver a perfectly cooked entraña (skirt steak) for around $30 per person. There’s also a good wine list with some top Uruguayan vintages, and the house-made flan (with a dollop of the ever-present dulce de leche) is one of the best in the city. — NMW

The cook and pastry chef Pia Morosini, who also goes by the pseudonym Lady Pixelita, has worked with Francis Mallmann and Ignacio Mattos, the New York-based Uruguayan chef-owner of Estela, among others. An ever-curious globetrotter, she trained as an ice cream maker in Italy, before bringing her Pixelita brand artisanal ice cream and sorbet project to Uruguay. Her products are free of preservatives, dyes, and artificial flavorings. They’re sold via social media and email, but you can also pick up a scoop at the shop in the Nuevo Pocitos neighborhood. In addition to classics such as dulce de leche and seasonal fruit sorbets, Morosini recently developed flavors with inspiration from classic cocktails, like lemon and vermouth, grapefruit and Campari, and peach and amaretto. — MB

For many years, Uruguay was internationally recognized for its quality meat, but it was inaccessible to locals; virtually all of it was exported. Eduardo Parodi, one of the owners, says García — originally opened as a canteen in 1967 in the Carrasco neighborhood — hit its stride in 2000 when the kitchen began to grill export-quality meat for local diners, first lamb and then beef, followed by an improved wine list and other offerings. Now García is a fine dining benchmark in the city. True to the Uruguayan old-school style, the waiters continue to dress the salad at the table, and the service is formal, down to the white tablecloths. Don’t miss the rack of lamb and the salads, and keep in mind the portions are huge so it’s always advisable to share. A couple of years ago the restaurant team opened a second location in the Punta Carretas neighborhood to great success. — MB

Businessman Roberto Behrens and chef Juan Pablo Clerici opened Café Misterio almost 30 years ago, offering cocktails and snacks in the posh neighborhood of Carrasco. The restaurant slowly turned into one of Montevideo’s best restaurants, adding a sushi bar and inviting foreign chefs to take over the kitchen. The space was renovated, but it retains its timeless look. Pack in with the regulars who have been coming for decades to enjoy classic truffled Milanese, gnocchi, the catch of the day with potato puree and verjus, and Nikkei tiraditos. Every year Clerici collaborates with the Familia Deicas winery to make the house wines. — MB

Located behind the majestic, French-inspired facade of the Carrasco Hotel, 1921 is named for the year of the hotel’s inauguration. The building had been abandoned for a decade when, in 2013, it was brought roaring back to life and turned into a freshly renovated Sofitel. The rather solemn dining room is still reminiscent of the early 20th century, but the warm servers and sommeliers do a great job of countering the formality of the space. Argentine chef Maximiliano Matsumoto, a disciple of Germán Martitegui in Buenos Aires, led the reopening at the end of 2021. On one of the most contemporary menus in Montevideo, Matsumoto’s preparations are delicate and harmonious, especially the dishes based on vegetables from local organic farms. The 800-gram beef rib to share stands out on the dinner menu. — MB