Nicaraguan food is hearty and unpretentious. The national staple is gallo pinto — rice and red beans cooked together with onion and sometimes sweet pepper — eaten at breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and almost always good. On the Caribbean coast, it's made with coconut milk and tastes noticeably different and better.
Vigorón is Granada's most famous dish: boiled yuca topped with chicharrones (fried pork skin) and a vinegary curtido of cabbage, tomato, and carrot, served wrapped in a banana leaf. You'll find vendors selling it around Granada's central park. It's one of those things that sounds questionable and tastes excellent.
Nacatamal is the Nicaraguan version of a tamale: a dense masa dough stuffed with pork, rice, potato, onion, and tomato, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. It's traditionally a weekend breakfast food, sold from doorways and small stalls on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Buy one, eat it warm.
Indio viejo is a stew made from shredded beef and corn masa with tomato, onion, and achiote — thick, earthy, and filling. Sopa de res (beef soup with vegetables) is served in almost every local comedor and makes a cheap, satisfying lunch.
Street food is cheap and generally safe to eat where it's freshly cooked. A full meal at a local comedor — the basic lunch-and-dinner restaurants that fill every market and town center — costs around C$100–150 ($2.50–4). Fresh tropical fruit is excellent and available everywhere.
In tourist areas, restaurants catering to international visitors serve pizza, pasta, burgers, and increasingly decent coffee alongside Nicaraguan standards. Granada has the best restaurant scene in the country. On Little Corn Island, a surprising number of places cook good fish and seafood given the island's small size.
Coffee from the Matagalpa-Jinotega highlands is genuinely good — medium-bodied, low-acid, clean. It's available across the country, though tourist restaurants sometimes serve Nescafé unless you ask for café de palo (locally grown coffee). If coffee matters to you, seek out specialty cafes in Granada, León, or Matagalpa itself.
Beer — the local brand is Victoria, a light lager. Flor de Caña rum, produced in Chichigalpa near León, is one of Central America's best rums and very affordable when bought locally.