What local dishes should I try in Guatemala, and where should I look for them?

Guatemala is one of the few countries that has legislated its menu. Under Ministerial Agreement 801-2007, the Ministry of Culture and Sports declared four dishes Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Nation — pepián, jocón, kak'ik and plátanos en mole — and added a fifth, pinol, in 2015. Together they map the country. Jocón, chicken in a green tomatillo-and-herb recado, comes from Huehuetenango in the western highlands. Kak'ik, a turkey soup dyed red with achiote and sharpened with cobanero chile, is the ceremonial dish of the Q'eqchi' Maya of Alta Verapaz — an authentic pot is said to hold at least 24 ingredients — and Cobán is where to eat it. Pinol, a roasted-cornmeal stew or drink of pre-Hispanic origin, belongs to Sacatepéquez, the department around Antigua. Plátanos en mole, fried plantains in a chocolate-chile mole, is the sweet one of the five.

The calendar adds dishes the decree does not list. Fiambre, eaten on November 1 for All Saints' Day, is a cold composed salad that the state news agency AGN notes can run to 50 ingredients — pickled vegetables, beets (which make the rojo version pink), cold cuts, sausages, cheeses and olives — assembled over days by each family to its own recipe and eaten at home and at gravesides; restaurants in Guatemala City and Antigua serve it through the season. Christmas belongs to tamales colorados and negros with hot ponche, and hilachas — shredded beef in tomato sauce, which the Ministry of Culture traces to Salamá in Baja Verapaz — turns up on comedor menus year-round.

Where to look is as regional as what. In Guatemala City, eat at the Mercado Central's food stalls under the cathedral square and at old-school comedores; in the highlands, time meals to market days — Chichicastenango on Thursdays and Sundays above all — where comedores serve the recados at communal tables. On the Caribbean, the dish changes language entirely: in Livingston, Garifuna cooks make tapado, a coconut-milk seafood soup with plantain and crab, eaten with hudut-like machuca-style plantain on the side. Everywhere, end at a street stall for atol — the hot corn drinks, atol de elote or atol blanco with beans and pepitoria on top — sold by the gourd-cup for pennies and drunk standing up.

A Chichicastenango market comedor at midday: steam off a clay pot of kak'ik, a stack of tortillas wrapped in an embroidered cloth arriving with every plate, and bowls refilled with broth the color of brick dust.

Guatemalans eat tortillas three times a day, and the meal is structured around them — a plate of the finest stew arrives with its own stack, expected to be used as spoon, scoop and wrap. Ordering extra tortillas is normal; refusing them marks the plate as unfinished business to any Guatemalan cook watching.

• Eat the heritage list regionally — Kak'ik in Cobán, jocón in the west, pinol around Antigua, rather than ordering all five in one city
• Lunch where the market eats — Take the midday meal in a market comedor, when the recados are freshest and the full menus run
• Time one trip to a food holiday — November 1 for fiambre or Christmas week for tamales and ponche, if the calendar allows

Fiambre exists for roughly one week a year and mostly in homes; outside early November you will not find it at any price. Heritage stews are celebration food, so small-town comedores may serve a given recado only on weekends or market days. And the Caribbean kitchen in Livingston depends on the boats — in rough weather the tapado loses its seafood.

Build one market-day lunch in Chichicastenango or Cobán around the regional stew, and if you travel in late October, reserve a fiambre lunch in Antigua or the capital.