So those of you who have seen my twittering would know that for the last week I have been in Fiji for work. Unfortunately it wasn’t a holiday!!! But I thought I would do a blog update of where we ate and where I stayed. It rained almost everyday we were there but it wasn’t cold at all. Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of the food as I was with work colleagues and it might have seemed a little weird to get my camera out every five seconds!!!
So firstly I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Suva (Suva is where we were based). Suva is the capital and probably not the best place to spend all your vacation time. It’s not the resorts you hear about and the Holiday Inn caters fairly well for business people. My room was nice and clean with plenty of space and little bit smaller than last year – which was fine cause the room last year was way too big for one person only there a nights and working most nights. So here are a few photos of my room from last year as I didn’t take any this year.
And the hotel itself is pretty nice!
But onto the food – which is what I’m most interested in!!!!!!!!!!! Being Vegan isn’t overly difficult in Fiji as there is always a vegetable curry on the menu as Fiji has a large Indian population. Just remember to ask for no ghee.
So night one we got into Suva pretty late. I had to fly from Adelaide to Sydney, Sydney to Nadi and then Nadi to Suva. So by the time we got in I was pretty tired and we decided to eat at the hotel restaurant. The hotel restaurant - Vikatoria's Restaurant - is pretty good and I had a really nice pastry with pumpkin, capsicum, grilled eggplant and other veggies. This was served with a sweet plum sauce which was really nice. The hotel restaurant is really nice and clean. It is great during the week at this time if you want to eat in peace away from a busy restaurant.
Night two was Tiko’s Floating Restaurant which is an old Blue Lagoon Cruise Boat. The food here is mainly seafood but they do have a really awesome salad bar – nothing like some of the bad salad bars you can get here in Aus. The best dish would have to green leafy vegetable that they cream with coconut milk. It tastes awesome and most of the salads are vegan. You can also have the option of just eating from the salad bar – which is a really cheap option. So for my main I had a a madras curry (mild) that was full of vegetables with some rice and pappadams. I think this was the best curry I have had in Fiji so I suggest you don’t be put off by the restaurants fish speciality and give it a go. The menu has a separate vegetarian section so it’s pretty to navigate around the abundance of seafood on the menu. I guess the only thing to remember is that it is on a boat which does rock back and forth – so if you’re really prone to sea sickness, this might be one to miss.
Night Three was an Indian curry place called Maya Dhaba. This is owned by the same people who own the one in
Surry Hills – so it’s a good safe option for the unadventurous. Again this restaurant is right on Victoria Parade and not far from the hotel. We didn’t venture to far at night, although we didn’t see any evidence of the current political tensions the country is experiencing we never travel to far from the hotel at night. This again is a pretty good curry place although I would have to say the curry I had at Tiko’s I thought was better. Again I ordered a veggie curry with some rice. We also ordered some naan but it appeared to have Ghee on it so I had to give that one a miss. All in all though it was a good meal.
On the fourth night we had my favourite – Daikoku. Okay I love the veggies in sauce here and it is great to watch your meal being cooked but it is a vegan minefield. Many dishes are not vegan and you are unable to tell until it comes to the table. For example I ordered some grilled eggplant (safe right?) and it came with Benito flakes on it – which was not included in the menu. The tofu I ordered was also cooked in butter. So my recommendation is that you make sure you ask exactly what the meal includes. To modify it to be a vegan meal is pretty easy but I wasn’t prepared. But as I said the cooked veggies on the teppanyaki plate are really oishii.
Okay so last but not least is a place we didn’t go this time as we didn’t have time but a place we went last year that was really nice and had a great curry offering. The Bad Dog Cafe – also located in the main street of Suva is a great place to go for lunch.
So Fiji is a really easy place to get a feed and the prices are moderate. I guess the places we went were more on the expensive side as they are there to cater to tourists but for us who got back to the hotel at 7 pm and then needed to be back at around 9 pm to work until about 1 am – they were perfect. My two favourites would definitely be Tiko’s and Daikoku and would recommended them to anyone staying in Fiji. They are not fully vegan though and Daikoku uses plates that cook meat (although they are fully cleaned) which may not suit all vegans. I don’t have an issue as Daikoku will cook the vegan meals first.
However it is important to be clear on what Vegan means. In Nadi we stayed at the Mercure for one night – where the food was terrible and I ordered the Vegan vs. Vegetarian pizza which made no mention of cheese in it’s ingredient listing (and every other pizza did). So of course when I received it and it was covered in cheese I was a little disappointed – especially since it was midnight and I hadn’t eaten much that day. Like anywhere it’s best to ask what you’re getting.
Okay one last picture of food – diet coke = light coke in Fiji!
