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Fiji is a nation of stark polarities. This is evident even before you touch town on Viti Levu (Great Land), Fiji’s largest island and home to 70 per cent of its inhabitants. Viewed from above, the emerald-green cloak of rainy-season Viti Levu even appears to be hewn in two – by the volcanic Nakauvadra mountain range, which rises up from the centre of the island to the peak of Mt Tomanivi (1323m) like a contorted spine.

As with the topography on many of the larger Fijian islands, these mountains act as a physical barrier to the heavy South Pacific rainfall – which leaves the eastern capital, Suva, rain-drenched and blanketed in cotton-wool cloud cover year-round. The climates on the two sides of the island, therefore, contrast sharply. The hazy white stretches of the eastern board become vivid blue skies and butterscotch sunshine in the west, where Nadi town, Denarau island (the spur of land off Nadi owned by Sheraton) and the Mamanuca and Yasawa groups lie (the latter having their own permanently dry and sunny microclimates which make them popular with tourists). The Fijians, however, have long taken these temperamental weather conditions in their stride, the Fijian proverb: ‘life is sometimes like this, sometimes sunshine, sometimes rain,’ pretty much summarising their thinking on the matter.

This philosophical stance casts light on the other important duality in Fiji, the division and interplay of the two cultures make up the Fijian population: the native Fijians who still live an agrarian existence in villages ruled over by unelected feudal chiefs, and the fourth and fifth generation Indo-Fijians, the descents of the sugar plantation slaves indentured by the British during the dark colonial days of the late nineteenth century.

Much like the Fijian existence, which is a largely relaxed mixture of the Indo-Fijian and Fijian cultures (media reports of the 2000 coup severely overplayed the everyday inter-ethnic tensions and inter-marriage is increasingly common). Fiji’s cuisine is a unique melting pot, or perhaps a culinary Venn diagram, with the Indian influenced vegetable-based dishes and the robust traditional Fijian fare largely distinct, but in places combined into new and unusual dishes and flavour combinations. This synthesis of flavours is sometimes exceptional – vegetable thalis from India’s southern states using native vegetables such as the starchy tavioka (cassava), and dalo; and occasionally inedible (Fijian ‘curries’, employing powdered turmeric and tinned fish). But it’s the interweaving of two such distinctly different cultures, cuisines and styles of living that makes Fiji so magical, and unique amongst its South Pacific neighbours.

It can be difficult to track down traditional Fijian food in restaurants –Fijians grow their own food and seldom use cash, let alone have it to waste on expensive restaurant dining. The Fijian diet, therefore – as with neighbouring pacific islands – traditionally depends heavily on carbohydrate-rich fruits and vegetables: taro, papayas and yams, with protein derived mainly from seafood and wildfowl and coconut milk and flesh frequently used as a basis for sauces and soups (the Fijians are almost reverential in their celebration of the humble coconut, of which more below). If you can swallow the generous sugar coating of ‘performance for the tourists’, the Denarau island resorts near to Nadi can be a great introduction to the most elaborate in Fijian cuisine (Nadi itself has little to recommend it in terms of dining, the best options are around Nadi Civic Centre).

The apex of Fijian feasting is undeniably the lovo – a variation on the deep-earth ovens found throughout the South Pacific – and this is what you can expect to find served up as indigenous Fijian cuisine in the Viti Levu’s West-coast resorts. The lovo cooking process is simple, but can produce sensationally flavourful results. The food (seafood, chicken, or root crops such as cassava or taro) are wrapped in a wet cloth or leaves, surrounded by rocks heated red-hot in a fire and cooked under a layer of earth, with meats piled at the bottom and vegetables layered on top. Steamed slowly, the food takes on a distinctive salt-metal aftertaste from the earth. This subtle imparting of flavour from the cooking process is the main aim of the lovo, so don’t expect elaborate 16-ingredient recipes. The popular dish of palusami (taro leaves filled with coconut cream, onions and in some cases tinned meat) is about as complicated as it gets. Wash it all down with a yeasty Fiji beer, or Fiji water, sold in high-end restaurants worldwide. The Sheraton Royal Denarau Resort (Sheraton.com/fiji, 675 0818) runs realistic lovo demonstrations and feasts throughout the year, although the backdrop of vivid green golf lawns and seas of bronzing bodies on sunloungers is less realistically Fijian.

Few tourists delve deeper into the recesses of the indigenous Fijian cooking pot, which is a pity, because there’s much more to discover. The best way to do this is to seek out a ‘home stay’ in a Fijian village. Increasingly popular with tourists sidestepping the extortionate rates of resort-land Fiji (FJ$350 and up for a double room), home stays (as the name suggests, staying in the home of a Fijian family), are rewarding on many levels. Not least the opportunity to taste the unadulterated flavour of traditional Fijian cooking. South from Nadi along the Queens Road – which is slung around the southern coast of Viti Levu, the mirror image of the King’s road on the north coast – lies Sanasana Village (pop 400), a stone’s throw from the idyllic white sands of Natadola beach, which are considered by many to be the best on Levu. Sanasana was one of the first villages to catch on to the home stay market. The corpulent and cheery husband and wife team of Michael and Takinta get a lion’s share of this trade, having their home positioned at the entry point to the village from the main road.

For around FJ$25 pp a night Mikael and Tanika will house you in one of their son’s bedrooms, take you to their Baptist church services and put every effort into fattening you up on just-caught fish, drowned in ‘miti’, a mixture of thick coconut cream combined with onions, chillies, lime juice, salt and pepper and served with boiled cassava and unceasing accompanying rounds of fried bread, fried in rich palm oil on a one-ring burner. True to Fiji’s famously warm hospitality, Tanika hovers at your side, warmly imprecating you to ‘kana vaka levu’ (eat more, eat more) as Mikael provides a visual impetus, ravenously devouring fish and coconut sauce with his fingers, rich white juices staining his rotund belly.

For true foodies, the experience of visiting a Fijian market is not to be missed. Sigatoka village market, heading south-west from Natadola along the Queen’s road at the mouth of the Sigatoka river, is one of the best, and Fijians and Indo-Fijians alike shop here for their produce. Cries of ‘bula, bula’ (the ubiquitous Fijian greeting), issue from peering afro heads obscured by vegetable and fruit wares, which are displayed bound and vertical, resembling government guards standing to attention. Vendors tend to specialise: everything from pumpkins like swollen pillows, to expansive coils of Fijian tobacco, finger-like eggplants, dry-skinned mandarins or gnarled yams that wouldn’t look out of place on a Lord of the Rings set. The men sit on their haunches, vigorously husking tavioka with stones, or gouging out the flesh of coconuts with blunt knives, to sell in plies like snow drifts.

Indigenous vegetables such as tavioka, lauki (a type of gourd), dalo and the asparagus-like delicacy daruka are perhaps the edible crossroads between the Indo-Fijian and Fijian culinary cultures, raw ingredients important to both cusines. Flanking the Sigatoka market, next to a literal crossroad, is another figurative one – the seemingly nondescript Gokools hot snacks. Hidden between musty Fijian dry goods stores, Gokools sells excellent samosa, south Indian idli (rice dumplings that are popular Keralan breakfast fare, served with coconut chutney), and great dahl - a Godsend if you’re craving a counterpoint to hearty Fijian fare, and the best typically Indian restaurant in the West of Viti Levu.

The true mecca for veggies and curry-lovers, however, is Suva. Despite the grey weather conditions, Suva is one of the most laid-back capitals you’re likely to come across. Nestled in a harbour with views into the surrounding mountains, it’s the epicentre of Indo-Fijian culture, and has an air of louche cosmopolitanism, afforded by the nearby University of the South Pacific. Japanese and Chinese food can be found in Suva, as well as the most sophisticated Indo-Fijian restaurants. Like the bastard child of a 50s American diner and a South Indian thali house, Ashiyana (331 300, Old Town Hall Bldg), features cheerful padded Formica booths, where waitresses serve up veggie thalis (selections of veggie curries) on authenitic silver thali plates. The sweet coconut chutnies are exceptional, as is channa (chickpeas) with squash and the spicy Fijian raita (a yoghurt-based Indian sauce intended to cool the ardour of spicy curries, that’s become a hot dish in Indo-Fijian hands). More Suva restaurant recommendations below.

While you’re in town ¬– and ONLY when your appetite’s sated – visit the Fiji Museum (Ratu Cakobau Road 3315 944). The most arresting amongst the well-maintained exhibits here details Fiji’s gory cannibal history, even down to the recipes used (Cannibals spoils were apparently wrapped in leaf, baked in a lovo and served with a salsa created from an ancient tomato varietal). Happily, the cuisine of modern-day Fiji – be it Indo-Fijian or stodgy indigenous Fijian fare – is on the whole much more appetising. As a neatly dressed Suva businessman in Ashiyana put it: ‘Fijians like more roti and curry, Indians like more vegetables, but if it is a love of food, we all have it.’

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