The food of Goiás is among the most distinctive regional cuisines in Brazil, shaped by the cerrado's unusual pantry of wild fruits, roots, and game. Pequi is the defining ingredient: a yellow-fleshed fruit with a pungent, divisive flavour that Goianos tend to love with the intensity of the converted. Arroz com pequi (rice cooked with the fruit) is everywhere, as is frango com pequi (chicken stewed with it). The small but intensely flavoured seed inside is edible; the outer layer of the flesh is not, and biting into it is a mistake tourists make once.
Empadão goiano is the other signature dish — a large, deep savoury pie filled with chicken, palm hearts (guariroba or palmito), olives, and hard-boiled eggs, with a crumbly, buttery crust. It is the kind of food designed to sustain a long day in the field and is deeply satisfying. Pamonha, a sweet or savoury corn paste wrapped and steamed in a corn husk, is sold from street stalls and is the easiest local food to try on the go.
The cerrado also contributes its wild fruits to the dessert and drink counter: pequi liqueur, baru nut brittle, jatobá powder in yoghurt, and cagaita jam appear in the better markets and specialist food shops. The Mercado Central is the most accessible place to taste all of this in concentrated form.