Food in French Polynesia is French and Polynesian, expensive at the resorts and cheap at the food trucks, and the difference between a family that eats well and one that spends a fortune is where they sit down.
Poisson cru is the dish. Raw tuna cubed and marinated in lime, then drowned in coconut milk with cucumber and tomato. It is served everywhere from the roulottes to the resort, it is mild and creamy, and children who eat fish eat it. It is the first thing to order and the thing you will order every day.
The pension dinner is the family meal. At a family guesthouse the owner cooks one dinner for all the guests at one long table, fresh fish, rice, breadfruit, a salad, a fruit dessert, and everyone talks. It is included in the room, it is the best food on the island, and the kids make friends.
The feast, the fruit, the bread
A tama’ara’a is the Tahitian feast, cooked in an ahima’a, the earth oven, with pork, fish, breadfruit, taro and po’e, the fruit pudding made with banana or papaya and starch, baked in banana leaf and served with coconut milk. The resorts do it on a Saturday with the dance show.
Baguettes. The French left the bread and every shop sells a baguette for a few cents, subsidized, and a baguette with butter and jam is the breakfast of every island child. Firi firi are the coconut doughnuts, twisted like a figure eight, from a roadside stand in the morning.
Fruit falls off the trees. Mango, papaya, pineapple from Moorea, bananas, star fruit, and a coconut opened with a machete. Hinano is the beer. Fresh juice from the market. Bottled water on the outer islands, and the tap on Tahiti and Moorea is fine.
Planning French Polynesia with kids? Start with the full French Polynesia family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.
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