As I land in Nadi, Fiji, on its main island of Viti Levu, one of the first flavours that hit my nose is the smell of curry and rice, an Indian staple. Indians who came to this archipelago nation of 330 islands as indentured workers to work on its sugarcane plantations in the 1870s, brought their curries, rice and chillies which makes Fiji’s cuisine distinctly different from its other Pacific island cousins.
Today, more than 40% of Fiji’s population is made up of Indo-Fijians. Fiji’s cuisine is also a product of its rich, multi-cultural history with spices, ingredients as well as cooking methods absorbing various influences from Indian and Chinese to Melanesian and European. Fijian food also has Polynesian influences from Samoa and Tonga through its trade routes. Fiji’s cuisine is centred around a few staple ingredients that are commonly found along the archipelago, like sweet potato, purple taro, cassava, coconuts and fish. “We Fijians don’t need much to be happy, just give us a little fish and cassava,” says Sena, a villager I talk to.
As a nation surrounded by water, it’s of course seafood that is the most common food for its islanders. Fijians eat most of what the sea offers, from mussels and mud crabs to oysters, sea cucumbers, lobsters, and reef fish. The common appetiser found in most buffets is Kokoda like the Peruvian ceviche, made with raw fish marinated with lime, chillies, and coconut milk.
At the Gunu village on Naviti island in the Yasawas, I taste my first lovo (a feast cooked in the earth, like the New Zealand Hangi) with an underground pit dug and lined by coconut fronds which is then lit up to heat the volcanic stones. Lovo cooking has been a Fijian tradition for centuries. Food like meat, fish and taro and potato marinated in lime, ginger and coconut cream and spices are covered by palm fronds, banana leaves and damp hessian bags to retain the heat and left for two to three hours. The cooked food that is taken out is tender and flavourful with a smoky, charcoal flavour. Lovos are common at weddings and feasts in villages and most resorts have a lovo meal as part of their Fijian evenings.
Vegetarians like me find rice, rotis and piquant curries, fresh salads, dal soups as well as local dishes like Palusami — made with boiled taro leaves mashed into a vegetable curry with coconut milk or cream and Baigan Valo where the eggplant is stuffed with a spicy sauce before being topped with coconut cream. Another unique item on buffets is Nama, also called sea grapes, a type of seaweed that grows in lagoon waters and can be added raw to salads along with lime juice and salt.
Breakfast buffets are a feast of local fruits like pineapple, bananas, guavas, and papaya in abundance as well as breads and local buns like lolo soaked in coconut milk. Breadfruit is another staple of locals that was spread around the islands by the first settlers, as it is both tasty and nutritious, and is eaten roasted on a fire, baked, boiled, or fried into fritters. Almost every house in a village has a breadfruit tree in its backyard. Other unique vegetables that one finds are Duruka or Fijian asparagus which is the unopened flower of a cane shoot and used in Indian curries as well as freshwater fiddleferns called Ota.
Desserts invariably have coconut or banana-steamed coconut puddings and vakalolo, a sticky steamed pudding made from cassava mixed with sugar and thick coconut cream and served with ice cream and bananas. Tender coconut water is universally offered to guests. Fiji is also globally renowned for its bottled drinking water and Fiji Water, owned by a private American company and hugely popular in the US and as many as 60 countries around the globe is sourced from a deep aquifer beneath the Nakauvadra Range in northern Viti Levu.
With a huge sugarcane industry, it is natural that Fiji has experimented with its rums. But if you want something really local then it has to be kava, Fiji’s national drink — a muddy-coloured, earthy drink made from a peppery root that is a ritual and ceremony in villages with the chief brewing it in a carved wooden bowl, and handing it out to guests as a welcome. Remember there is a kava protocol — when it is your turn to drink, cup your hands, clap once and then take the cup and down the contents in one go. Return the cup to the bearer and clap your hands again three times. Kava can be relaxing and more than a few glasses can make you tongue-tied, say the locals. It can also numb your tongue and lips.