Ultimate Tahiti Food Guide: Top 10 Must-Try Eats and Drinks in Paradise

What to eat and drink in Tahiti?

A plate of Poisson

Hey, don’t get startled! Please notice the spelling. Poisson Cru is 100% Tahiti Food.

In this blog post, I am writing about several Tahiti Foods. If you ever go to Tahiti, a paradise on earth, you should be prepared what you are going to eat.

The Tahiti Food is totally new to many of us who don’t hail from Polynesia, Melanesia, or Micronesia.

Are you raising eyebrows, wondering where are the “ …nesias”? They are island groups located in the South Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii, and Australia.

Tahiti is part of the Society Islands archipelago, which in turn is put under Polynesia.

Tahiti politically belongs to France and is known as one of the leading islands of French Polynesia

Just for your information, Tahiti’s highly visited siblings include:

Moorea
Bora Bora
Raiatea
Taha’a
Huahine

Let us move from the geography to the dining table.

Tahitian cuisine:

The most prominent ingredients in the Tahiti Foods are coconut and vanilla. We can understand coconut as one of the ingredients but vanilla? How does it find a place for lunch and dinner? We find out soon.

I just unearthed some information. In Tahitian kitchens, both savory and sweets use vanilla as a flavoring agent.

Very interesting and certainly tempting us to try.

Ultimate Tahiti Food Guide: Best 10 Must-Try Eats and Drinks in Paradise

Let us begin the list of dishes to eat in Tahiti and also in other Society Islands.

Poisson Cru

You will find it served in front of you, wherever you go to eat. It is basically a rice dish with raw vegetables as well as raw fish. In the title image of Poisson Cru, I thought I found a few pieces of raw shrimps, chunks of coconuts, beans, and onion. Obviously, vanilla won’t be visible.

By the way, do you know what the parent of vanilla flavour looks like?

Dried Vanilla beans:

Ah, another tasty ingredient that goes into the making of Poisson Cru is coconut milk. This is mostly used in preparing sweets in South East Asia.

But then, we are looking at Tahitian cuisine, which is refreshingly strange to many of us.

Now, to startle you again, Poisson Cru is served chilled! It certainly is the pride of Tahiti and is considered their national dish.

In some menu cards, if you read E’ia Ota, understand that it means Poisson Cru.

Firi Firi

That’s a Tahitian name for local donuts that are eaten for breakfast! It is a sweet dish. It’s strange to find a sweet dish on the breakfast plate.

I have seen this practice in rural Maharashtra state in India.

Chevrette

It’s one more authentic Polynesian food. When a bowl of Chevrette is set up on the dining table, you will identify shrimp floating in coconut milk and detect the aroma of vanilla.

The Tahitian restaurants serve Chevrette as a starter. In small food kiosks, it’s one of the main dishes, and it is filling because of the coconut milk.

Uru (Roasted fruit?)

Uru is eaten only on the Society Islands. Of late, this is found in New Zealand’s cafes also.

Uru is basically the ‘Breadfruit’. In Tahiti, the strange custom is to put the breadfruit in a log of fire.

It is left in fire, until it becomes dark, and then eaten as such. I think this kind of cooking may be called ‘roasted’.

It looks like a cousin of jackfruit. It is said to have traveled left and right (I mean west and east) of New Guinea, one of the largest tropical islands in the world, and is located just north of Australia.

Miti Hue

This is the first time I am coming across a food item whose one of the ingredients is seawater.

The other ingredients are coconut and a prawn that lives in freshwater.

It goes like this.

The coconut used is here the one that we use to extract its water to drink. The remaining portion inside the coconut is rather soft and tender.

The Tahitians scoop out the tender coconut and place it in a bowl of seawater.

To this innocuous mixture, only the head of the freshwater prawn is added and left to ferment.

The fermentation might take up to 7 days. The resultant semi-solid is served as an accompaniment to any main course.

The fishermen don’t bother about any additions. They just consume it as such.

Man, what an exotic Tahiti Food! I wonder how they originally conceived this recipe. It must have been an accident that it was found out.

Taioro

Miti Hue and similarly Taioro are considered as condiments, but the recipe for preparing Taioro is different and very primitive.

A tender coconut is chosen, and a hole is drilled into the shell to drain out the sweet water which is then replaced by seawater.

Here comes a strange process. The head of either a shrimp or a crab is squeezed to extract some drops of juice and it is poured into the coconut shell.

The hole is closed, and the coconut is left to ferment. It might take a few weeks to happen.

I think the fermentation is confirmed by the smell emanating from the coconut before scooping out the soft coconut.

I am sure this is a dish made only in the homes of the Tahitians. I doubt it will be on sale in restaurants.

Po’e

I read about it, and I think it is one of the must-eat Tahitian dishes.

Po’e is actually a fruit jelly. The fruits used here are either one of the following fruits.

Papaya
Watermelon
Banana

They are replaced by either ripe yellow pumpkins or even sweet potatoes due to the non-availability of the fruits.

Somehow or in some form, they add starch to the fruit pulp and cook it until the pulp’s consistency is in jelly form.

Once again, a bowl of coconut milk is placed beside the plate containing Po’e

It is eaten as a dessert at the end of dinner.

Pu’a Roti

Don’t mistake the roti for the Asian flatbread. There is no roti or pulka meant here.

This is a street food in Tahiti. Pu’a Roti is nothing but roasted slices of pork but somehow sweetened. Imagine the combination of pork meat and sugar. What an incredible invention!

Ma’a Tahiti

This is not the name of any particular dish, but points to a Tahiti Food eaten during festivals and also the method of cooking.

Invariably pork is placed in large clay pots (earthen oven) and basic vegetables such as onion, grated coconut, and cassava are added, and the cooking oven is placed beneath the earth and cooked subterranean.

Tahitian Drinks.

Remember, this is a French territory. You get to drink what the French people like.

Apart from that, you can try Mai Tai, a rum-based cocktail in which more than one citrus fruit juice is added.

Pina Colada

This rum-based cocktail is a native of the Caribbean Islands. I think it will taste something out of the world because of the addition of coconut milk, and freshly-made pineapple juice.