Guests at Castaway Island Resort are encouraged to unplug from their daily lives and relax. Photo / Supplied
The tourist mecca's restaurants are fast becoming a culinary force with their focus on fresh, local ingredients and indigenous dishes, discovers Delaney Mes.
Fiji. It's probably not the first place you think of when you're a food lover wanting a holiday.
Sure, I expected some tropical fruit, maybe some food with an Indian influence, and plenty of coconut. And there was all that, but I was blown away by my five days in Fiji at the culture, generosity, and amazing hidden culinary gems this group of Pacific islands has to offer.
Kana vakalevu I was told a number of times - eat a lot, eat well. And as I feasted, I learned a lot along the way.
It's a three-hour flight to Nadi from Auckland and, with no time difference, it's an easy escape. Many tourists get as far as the Denarau Island hotel strip, about 20 minutes from Nadi Airport, and stop there. Since there are more than 300 islands in this archipelago, I am keen to get on a boat and see some of them.
The Mamanuca group is the largest and, within them, Castaway Island resort is the first stop. Castaway Island has a colourful history. During the Cannibalism War of the 1850s, the Paramount Chief used Qalito, its native name, as a retreat after his son was killed. It became a sacred spot for the chief, and that feeling of retreat continues today. Staff at Castaway encourage guests to unplug from their daily lives, relax and reconnect with their families.
It works for many - more than 42 per cent of guests at Castaway are returnees. From the second our boat approaches shore we're met by a group of staff standing on the white sand singing us a Fijian welcome.
Castaway is committed to sustainability, and is a key member of the Mamanucas Environment Society. It is also committed to marine education and snorkelling is a popular pastime. The resort supports locals too - we're told the clay beads we receive as a welcome are made by local women, unlike a lot of shell necklaces people can buy in Fiji, which come from the Philippines.
Resorts haven't always been famous for their food. At Castaway, after settling into my beachside bure, with its tapa cloth ceiling and its small porch on the sand overlooking the water, we have lunch at the Sundowner Bar and Grill. Wood-fired pizza is the specialty and. washed down with a Fiji Gold lager. It's a perfectly casual lunch.
We go back to Sundowner at sunset for Fiji's signature large, fruity cocktails, before dinner at 1808, one of the resort's restaurants, named for the year Chinese settled in Fiji. It soon becomes apparent the investment Castaway management has made in its food over the past 10 years has paid off.
1808 has been the winner in the fine-dining category of the national tourism awards for a number of years. Listening to the waves lapping in the darkness while sitting under the coconut trees provides that perfect tropical ambience dreams are made of.
The restaurant follows the worldwide trend of farm to table, and embraces traditional practices. During the chef's demo at our table, Chef Dennis demonstrates using charcoal, cooking in bamboo and making lolo - coconut milk - from scratch.
The traditional way of cooking lolo involves scraping the coconut using a long, dangerous-looking, sharp-edged apparatus, heating a hot stone in a fire pit, and packing the coconut shreds around the stone so it heats and flavours it with a mellow, smoky flavour. It is unlike any coconut milk I've ever had. The dessert is made with local Savusavu dark chocolate, which makes an incredible dark chocolate fondant pudding.
Local bacon, pancakes, and tropical fresh fruit are on the menu the next day for breakfast then we are farewelled with more singing and head back to the boat.
More lolo is being made in the traditional way when we arrive on the island of Mana. Castaway's former head chef Lance Seeto is now at the helm at Mana Island, a job he manages alongside his TV cooking show and his consulting work for Fiji Airways.
He is passionate about embracing traditional Fijian cooking techniques. "We need to eat what our ancestors ate," he declares as we arrive by golf buggy at the opposite end of the island and are promptly handed a welcome drink.
Seeto is a Chinese Australian who, after toughing it out for years as a chef in Melbourne, finally found happiness - and a lucrative career - transforming traditional Fijian food into modern dining cuisine.
He has been here five years, arriving after what sounded like a stressful pace of life in Melbourne. He "discovered kava" pretty quickly and learned the history and the village stories around the kava bowl.
We are overlooking the water with a group of cooks around us, as we sit down with our cocktails and chat to Seeto. His work with Fiji Airways came about after they told him to put his money where his mouth was - he had been outspoken about the resorts making headway transforming Fijian food and the national airline not keeping up.
He now consults for them and has overseen additions like adding a local chutney with Fijian flavours alongside the breakfast omelette to give people a small teaser of what's to come.
The kokoda (raw fish salad) with seared tuna served inside coconut shells made into bowls that we have with the aforementioned lolo is incredible.
It is followed by the chargrilled slipper lobster done on open coals. It's a spectacularly simple blend of traditional and modern.
We have to earn it, though. Before we sit down to the beautifully laid table overlooking the water, alongside the group of cooks preparing our lunch, we are told we have to go snorkelling for sea grapes for the second-course salad.
Local guide Peido takes us out on a small boat and, amid electric-blue starfish, schools of other tropical fish and plenty of coral, we pick the small bunches that look like miniature fingers of green grapes.
We finish the leisurely, multi-course lunch with a coco-colada - a kind of pina colada done in a fresh young coconut. The young coconuts are still green, compared to the mature hard brown ones, which are used really only for medicinal purposes.
With that, though, we are taken in a golf cart back to the port, and farewelled again by song. We are on the ferry back to Denarau in time to watch a stunning sunset over the islands. It is picture-postcard stuff - all those stereotypical images of Fiji you may know, in stunning full colour.
A number of the big European hotel chains occupy a strip of beach in Denarau. The island is popular for people simply wanting to fly in and be by a pool.
The hotels have all tried to do different things with their restaurants, and the Radisson Blu makes its point of difference with a dining experience where your feet are in the water.
The menu has embraced local flavours, too, and it's popular for large birthday groups. It is definitely something different - low lighting, dangling wet feet, entertainment in the form of a traditional dance and local ingredients such as breadfruit, slipper lobster and plenty of seafood, again.
The Sofitel is also finding a point of difference with its food. About to open is a Bali-style, adults-only beach club - a high-end experience with its own pool and a look to health food, which then turns into a nightclub.
I have one day of total relaxation - a massage at the spa, lounging by the pool drinking cocktails out of coconuts (again), but I am keen to get out of Denarau and do a bit of exploring in Nadi and its surrounds.
The Nadi market is an enormous food market, with spices, fresh produce and fish laid out for all to see. I go with a local, so am delighted to learn what everything is, and how it's used.
I buy giant pink guava and local oranges - thinner skin and sweeter flesh than ours - and see thick white asparagus, local papaya and chilli in all different sizes.
Inspired to cook after a visit to the market, it is perfect timing that we are booked into the Flavours of Fiji cooking school to experience a different kind of local food.
Getting into the kitchen and embracing local knowledge, as well as receiving a full run-down on Fijian food philosophy, gives us a refreshing insight to this country.
Ethee, our Fijian cooking teacher, talks us through village life, including how it's the women's responsibility to be in the kitchen. Village life and traditional customs still very much exist for much of the country. Traditional cooking methods we have seen embraced by the resorts, such as hollowing out bamboo, filling it with the food to be cooked - including vegetables and fish - then closing it and steaming it in the open fire, are still very much a part of life here.
Flavours of Fiji is very well set up. We all have our own station with a gas hob and all the utensils we need to make each dish. We make Fijian food in the first part of the class, sit down to eat it, then launch into Indian cooking with Arti, a Fijian-Indian woman who teaches us how to make roti from scratch, dhal soup, and murgh aloo masala (chicken and potato curry).
Over our first lunch of rourou (boiled and fried taro leaves), ika vakalolo (fish in coconut milk) and tavioka vakasoso (cassava balls in a caramel sauce) we also share taro and fresh fruit, and Ethee tells us they're lucky in Fiji to be able to grow the produce they do.
She also explains about the unofficial rule in Fiji - the first time you visit, you make friends with a Fijian, and the second time you visit, you stay with them, eat with them and live like a Fijian.
I don't need to be convinced after a meal like that.
Another stand-out local meal is about a 20-minute taxi ride from Denarau, in Nadi. Sweet Laisa's Kitchen is a new Fijian restaurant serving wonderful local food.
There's plenty of chargrilled fresh fish and local vegetables, but we find it's best to share the huge platters of mixed seafood - clams, fish, octopus - with all the accompaniments.
Laisa cooked on superyachts for a number of years until a back injury after a boating accident forced her on to dry land.
While bedridden, she realised there were hardly any Fijian restaurants in Fiji, which seemed crazy, given that tourism is Fiji's bread and butter.
Sweet Laisa's leaves us nourished, and I feel like a friend has just cooked me dinner. It's a true local experience and a refreshing contrast to the hotels.
With a full belly, a bit of a tan, some new recipes and a bottle of Fiji rum to make cocktails in coconuts back home, I leave this tropical island paradise, feeling like I've really only scratched the surface.
Whether it's total relaxation you're after, or a bit of exploring, there's much to see, and eat, and plenty of the friendliest people to meet along the way.
IF YOU GO
Getting there: Fiji Airways operates up to 13 weekly services between Auckland and Fiji and two weekly services between Christchurch and Nadi. Fiji Airways is the only airline to offer child discounted airfares as well as a daily business class travel option directly from New Zealand to Fiji. From June 25, it will be the only airline flying directly between Wellington and Fiji all year.
Further information: See fiji.travel.
Delaney Mes travelled to Fiji courtesy of Fiji Airways and operators.
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