A Temple to Cachama in Ecuador's Rainforest

Paradero Paquisha's mastery of the Amazonian fish in the Napo province.

Cachama being smoked at Paradero Paquisha in Ecuador. Photo: Nicholas Gill.

The menu is hung from a vinyl print that drapes the concrete brick wall at Paradero Paquisha, a roadside restaurant, across from a yoga retreat with a meditating monkey in front of it, 15 kilometers from Tena down a long, lonely road sided by the occasional Kichwa chakra and patch of rainforest, in Ecuador’s Napo province, just over the other side of the Andes from Quito. There are photos of each dish like in a Chinese restaurant and the prices are written on a piece of tape beside the names. There’s smoked chicken, Grilled pork chops. Grilled or fried tilapia. Caldo de gallina criolla. Bandeja de cachama ahumada. That one. That one right there, the cachama (Piaractus brachypomus), sometimes called pacu or gamitana, is why you’ll drive all the way here from from away.

There are lots of restaurants that grill fish all across the Amazon, however, there are very few places that do it so well. There’s Remanso do Peixe, from the Castanho family of chefs, in Belém do Pará, Brazil, who are experts in cooking tambaqui (Colossoma macropomum), which looks similar though larger than cachama. There are the grills that set up every evening near the hospital in Tarapoto, Peru. There was also a man named Santiago Alves, who used to grill whole paiche, which could weigh hundreds of kilos, at his fish outside of Iquitos, but he passed away last year. Then there is is Paradero Paquisha. While in the area for research on my next book, my friends Jacob Olander and Marta Echevarria, who run the small company Canopy Bridge in nearby Archidona, insisted it’s a place we have to go.