Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
FOOD AND DRINK
Until fairly recently Fiji was a bit of a culinary backwater, with very basic Indian and
Chinese restaurants dominating the high streets and most resorts serving unimaginat-
ive international cuisine. However much has changed: both Nadi and Suva boast styl-
ish and reasonably priced restaurants serving everything from Italian to Japanese food,
and it's also now easier to find well-presented traditional Fijian cuisine. Out on the re-
sorts, internationally acclaimed chefs have been brought in to raise the cooking stand-
ards expected by upmarket travellers.
Fijian cuisine
Fijian cuisine
includes plenty of locally caught bony reef fish cooked in rich coconut cream,
and sometimes
kai
mussels, mud crabs and even lobster, but little meat except for slow-
cooked pig (
taro)
on a special occasion. When the seas are rough or the season's pickings are
slender, Fijians resort to imported fatty mutton and tinned corned beef, the latter perceived as
something of a delicacy and often served up by the carton at ceremonial functions.
Appearing at every mealtime is a hefty portion of starchy
rootcrop
, either cassava (a bland
and extremely dry tuber),
dalo
(known as
taro
in Polynesia, a large corn) or yams (huge
tubers, sometimes two metres long, and the most flavoursome of the three rootcrops).
Veget-
ables
are less common, with the most popular being
bele
, a green, sometimes slimy, leaf, and
rourou
, the leaf of the
dalo
crop which if cooked too quickly causes an itchy sensation to the
throat. The availability of
fruit
is dependent on the season.
Traditional Fijian dishes include:
kokoda
, made from a large fish, usually tuna or wahoo,
chopped into chunks, marinated overnight in lime juice and chillies, seasoned with coconut
cream and served cold;
palusami
, coconut cream wrapped up in the leaf of
dalo
and slow
cooked (delicious); and the kids' favourite
vakalolo
, a sticky pudding made from cassava
mixed with sugar and thick coconut cream and best served with ice cream and bananas. Fish
in
lolo
(coconut cream) with cassava or
dalo
is served as counter food in most high-street res-
taurants, but finding the more delicate dishes of kokoda, palusami,
vakalolo
or lovo suckling
pig is more challenging:
Nadina
in Nadi and
Old Mill Cottage
in Suva are two of the few
restaurants serving traditional Fijian cuisine.
Fiji-Indians
tend to be more adventurous in taste, relying on home-cooked curries, often
made of freshly picked vegetables seasoned with hot chillies and other spices, accompanied
by home-made chutney but usually drowned in oil or ghee.
