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What to eat in Fiji - A guide to the food Fijians actually love
The food at a Fijian resort is usually fine. It is designed for an international palate, fresh, and perfectly acceptable. It is also not what Fijians eat at home. The real food of Fiji — the food that diaspora Fijians dream about when they are homesick, that is cooked for every significant gathering, that sits in the sensory memory of everyone who grew up in the islands — is something else entirely.
Fijian cuisine is, like so much of Fijian culture, a blend. It draws from indigenous Pacific food traditions, from Indian cooking brought by indentured workers and their descendants, and from the influences of Chinese, European, and other communities that have made Fiji their home. The result is a food culture that is genuinely distinctive and, once encountered properly, completely compelling.
Kokoda - Fiji's national dish
If there is one dish that defines Fijian coastal cooking, it is kokoda. Raw fish — traditionally walu or mackerel, though snapper and mahi-mahi work equally well — marinated in fresh lime juice until the acid effectively cooks it, then mixed with coconut cream, chilli, spring onions, tomato, and capsicum. It is served cold, usually in a coconut shell or on taro leaf, and it is extraordinary.
The balance of the acid from the lime, the richness of the coconut cream, and the freshness of the fish is, when it is made well, one of the most satisfying things you can eat in the Pacific. Every family has its own version — more or less chilli, different fish, the addition of cucumber or avocado. If you are invited to eat kokoda at a Fijian home, you accept immediately.
The lovo - Underground earth oven
The lovo is the traditional Fijian method of cooking for large gatherings — meat, fish, root vegetables, and palusami (taro leaves filled with coconut cream and onion, wrapped in more taro leaves) all cooked together in a pit lined with heated stones and covered with earth and leaves. The result is a smoky, tender, extraordinary communal meal.
A proper lovo takes the better part of a day to prepare and requires community effort. You will encounter it at village celebrations, weddings, church gatherings, and occasionally at cultural tourism experiences. Resort lovos exist, and they are good. A village lovo is better.
Indo-Fijian food - roti, dhal, and the rest
The Indo-Fijian culinary tradition is one of the great unheralded food cultures of the Pacific. Roti — the thin, soft flatbread that is the foundation of most Indo-Fijian meals — is made fresh at almost every meal. Dhal, the lentil soup that is both everyday comfort food and celebratory dish depending on how it is prepared, is present at virtually every family table.
Curry in its Fijian form is not the same as Indian curry. It has been adapted over 150 years to local ingredients and local palates — less complex in its spicing than many Indian regional cuisines, fresher in character, often cooked with fresh chilli and coriander. Chicken curry, mutton curry, fish curry — all are essential. Eaten with roti or rice, they are the food of the Indo-Fijian diaspora wherever in the world it has settled.
Other staples: aloo (curried potato), pumpkin curry, banana curry, chutney made with fresh mango or tamarind. Mithai — Indian sweets — at celebrations, particularly ladoo, gulab jamun, and barfi. And at virtually every gathering, chai — strong, sweet, milky tea — in quantities that Australians used to single espressos find remarkable.
The produce - what grows in Fiji
In Fiji, cassava is what potato is in Ireland — the starchy staple that appears at almost every meal in some form, roasted, boiled, or fried, and whose absence at the table would be noticed immediately.
Cassava, taro, sweet potato, breadfruit — the root vegetables and starches of the Pacific are fundamental to Fijian cooking. Pawpaw (papaya), bananas, mangoes, pineapple — the tropical fruit is outstanding and cheap. Fijian fish, from the markets in Suva and Nadi, is as fresh as anywhere in the world.
Where to eat - if you want the real thing
The Suva Municipal Market is the best food destination in Fiji that most tourists never visit. The fresh produce section in the morning is extraordinary. The hot food stalls — roti with curry, steamed buns, fresh tropical juice — are inexpensive, delicious, and absolutely reliable. Nadi Market is similar in character, slightly smaller.
Local restaurants, particularly in residential areas of Suva and Lautoka, serve the real Indo-Fijian food that resort restaurants approximate. Ask any local where they eat, not where tourists eat. The answer will be better and cheaper.