Raw fish marinated in coconut cream and lime — Fiji's signature iTaukei dish, similar in concept to ceviche but with a richer character from the coconut cream.

Why does Fiji have such distinct Indo-Fijian food?

Fiji's Indo-Fijian community descends from indentured labourers brought to work the colonial-era sugar industry, and their food traditions — curries, rotis, chutneys — developed as a genuine, fully realised cuisine alongside the iTaukei tradition rather than a diluted version of it.

Is kava a drink I should order at a restaurant?

It's better experienced through its actual ritual context — a village sevusevu or an organised cultural experience — rather than ordered casually. The ritual, not the taste, is the point.

Food guide

Eating in Fiji: Two Cuisines, One Table

Q: How does a lovo actually cook the food?

Heated stones go into a pit, leaf-wrapped meat, fish and root vegetables are laid over them, and the pit is covered with more leaves and earth to trap the heat, cooking everything slowly for several hours. It's a genuine cooking method producing enough food for a real gathering, not a themed dinner show.

Fiji is genuinely bicultural at the table. The iTaukei tradition and the Indo-Fijian tradition developed separately and stayed distinct, and a visitor who only tries one is missing half the country's actual food culture.

Updated 2026-08-15

Kokoda and the iTaukei table

Kokoda, raw fish marinated in coconut cream and lime, is Fiji's signature iTaukei dish and often the first comparison visitors reach for — it plays a similar role to ceviche, though the coconut cream gives it a genuinely different, richer character than a citrus-only marinade. Beyond kokoda, iTaukei cooking centres on fresh fish, root vegetables like taro and cassava, and tropical fruit, prepared simply enough that the quality of the ingredients does most of the work rather than complex technique.

How a lovo actually works

The lovo, Fiji's earth-oven feast, is a genuine cooking method rather than a themed dinner event: stones are heated over a fire until glowing, meat, fish and root vegetables wrapped in banana or bele leaves are laid over them, and the whole pit is covered with more leaves and earth to trap the heat, cooking everything slowly over several hours. The result is smoky, tender and communal by necessity — a lovo produces enough food for a genuine gathering, which is exactly why it's associated with celebrations and village hospitality rather than everyday cooking.

The Indo-Fijian table

Fiji's Indo-Fijian community traces to indentured labourers brought to work the colonial-era sugar industry, and their descendants' food — curries, rotis, chutneys, street snacks — is as genuinely developed as anything found in South Asia, not a diluted diaspora version. In Nadi and Suva especially, iTaukei and Indo-Fijian food sit side by side at markets and small restaurants, and moving between the two in the same meal or the same day is one of the most direct ways to understand how the country's two major communities actually coexist.

Kava is a ritual, not a food

Kava (yaqona), made from the pounded root of the yaqona plant mixed with water, is mildly sedative and shared from a communal tanoa bowl in a structured social ritual — the sevusevu presentation to a village chief, then rounds of drinking with their own etiquette of clapping and passing — rather than a beverage ordered casually at a meal. It's worth trying with genuine respect for the ritual rather than treating it as a novelty drink; the taste itself (earthy, faintly numbing on the tongue) is almost beside the point of what it's actually for.

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