Cuisine - Mulicultural Delights

Cuisine

Mulicultural Delights

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Fine food in Tahiti and Her Islands is typically a natural style of cooking based on fresh products exotically blended and prepared according to various culinary influences from around the world. There is the presence of European cuisine within a tropical setting. Asian cooking has also added its own tastes and textures turning Pacific dishes into something surprisingly distinctive and new.

"French Polynesia is a unique cuisine"

The result today throughout French Polynesia is a unique cuisine, a melange of French, Chinese and Polynesian food which provides unending pleasure for locals and visitors alike. The people of Tahiti and her islands are dedicated to the preparation and presentation of fine food, and as the three races of French Polynesia – Tahitian, European and Chinese – have intermarried, producing a thoroughly mixed race of people, so too has their cuisine become an eclectic blend of cooking styles. Fresh fish of all kinds, whether tuna, bonito, mahimahi or the many variety of lagoon fish are prepared in many different ways -- roasted, grilled or boiled -- and form the centerpiecve of typically Tahitian meal tables. Meat dishes are also highly favored, due to the abundance of high cuts from New Zealand.

But by shopping around

, you can eat wonderfully well for a fraction of that price. Delectable ‘sandwiches’ of crusty, crunchy French bread, with generous fillings of ham, chicken, beef or cheese, are on offer everywhere from snack bars, and cost about £1.60 each. A couple of these can keep a person going until evening. Best dining value of all are ‘les roulottes’, the little caravans that roll down to the waterfront in Papeete and the other towns as sunset approaches. Usually family run, the roulottes offer a variety of chicken, steak, fish, pizza and other substantial meals, cooked over gas fires and costing about £8. They’re great places to eat, especially on Papeete’s paved dockside area, with a flaring, multi-coloured sunset over the peaks of Moorea providing a brilliant backdrop and with the locals strolling about ‘en famille’.

The larger hotel organise large buffet evenings that offer a feast panorama of local culinary delights accompanied by traditional dance performances.