Where should I eat in Iguazu Falls, and which local food or drink is worth trying?

Argentina's agriculture ministry describes yerba mate as Ilex paraguariensis, a tree native to South America whose natural range runs between the Paraguay River and the Atlantic coast, roughly between 18° and 30° south latitude — a band that Puerto Iguazú sits inside. More than 18,000 registered producers work the production zone, and the Corrientes share is concentrated in the Ituzaingó and Santo Tomé departments. The product carries a registered geographical indication, "Yerba Mate Argentina", under Resolution No. 13/2016.

Harvest timing is the detail that makes a visit different depending on when you come. The ministry gives the harvest months as May through September, chosen because the plant has slowed its sap flow and carries a higher proportion of mature leaves. That is also the cooler half of the year in Misiones, so a dry-season trip to the falls coincides with the working season in the yerba plantations that surround them.

Where to eat is a thinner question, because no official body publishes a restaurant register for Puerto Iguazú. What can be said structurally is that the park and the town are separate: Iguazú National Park covers 67,698 hectares of Selva Paranense, visitation runs to 1.3 to 1.5 million people a year, and IUCN notes that peak periods already exceed infrastructure capacity inside the property. Eating inside the park at a peak hour is therefore the single most predictable queue of the day, and the town is where the alternative is.

Mate is not a drink you order like coffee, and the geographical indication is a clue to why. Resolution No. 13/2016 protects the name as a product of origin rather than a brand, which is the same logic that puts 90 percent of the national planted area in one province: the plant is specific to this latitude band and this climate. The gourd is refilled and passed around rather than poured into separate cups, so being offered mate in Misiones is closer to a social gesture than to table service — and the leaf in it will almost certainly have been cut between May and September.

• In town — Puerto Iguazú is where the non-captive dining is; the park's own capacity pressure peaks at exactly the hours you would want lunch.
• Mate in the afternoon — The harvest runs May to September, so the cooler months are when the crop and the countryside around the park are both active.
• Read the label — "Yerba Mate Argentina" is a registered geographical indication under Resolution No. 13/2016, not a marketing phrase.

Hygiene is the practical issue in a humid subtropical park handling well over a million people a year, and mate is drunk from a shared vessel. CDC Yellow Book guidance for travelers puts handwashing first: soap and water before preparing or eating food, after using the bathroom and after contact with animals, and where soap is unavailable an alcohol-based sanitizer with at least 60 percent alcohol, followed by washing when possible. It adds that sanitizer works poorly on visibly dirty or greasy hands and is less effective against Cryptosporidium and norovirus, and that prepared food should not sit at room temperature for more than 2 hours. On logistics, the park sits in forest rated by IUCN as under High threat from invasive species and water pollution, and flooding has closed trails for months at a time — September 2023 to May 2024 — so a day planned around a particular walk and a particular meal can be rearranged by the river.

The Iguazú when-to-visit question in this group sets out the visitor caps and flood closures that shape a day; the things-to-do question covers the forest's species counts and the jaguar population.