Fijian Food Is the Best Cuisine You've Never Had

Fijian cuisine really is like the bottled water in many ways: All of the flavors are very clean, really light and honest. And yes, all water in Fiji is as soft as the bottled water, too—so you can essentially bathe in it, if that makes you happy.

I think Fijian food should be under the same category as Southeast Asian food.

The underrated cuisine shares a lot of its core ingredients with Thai food, depending on coconut, lime, turmeric, galangal, and fresh herbs to create much of it zingy flavors. The saddest thing is that not only is Fijian food underrepresented in the world, it is even underrepresented in Fiji.

Since Fijians rely on Western culture and Western tourism for the majority of their income, the native food scene there kind of died when all of the resorts invaded. The kitchens all started cooking Western food—things like pizza and steak—and the traditional cuisine was overlooked. Even right now, locals aren't learning how to cook traditional dishes anymore. It really is a shame how the roots run so deep in people for the cuisines of of Southeast Asia, but not for Fiji.

Luckily for me, I noticed this tragedy at a young age while exploring my own Fijian heritage in the kitchen, beside my Fijian-Chinese grandmother, and decided to heed my native calling.

The first Fijian dish that everyone should know about is lovo. It's not so much an actual dish than it is a two-day affair. Essentially, it's our adaptation of cooking food underground, and it is our go-to dish for any special occasion, especially weddings. The process for it starts by making a bonfire and then putting river rocks in the pit until they get real hot. When the fire dies down, you marinate different meats and sweet root vegetables—like taro, sweet potato, chicken, pork—with things like coconut cream, soy sauce, and garlic. Wrap it all in banana leaves, cover it with a layer of soil and more banana leaves. Then, as you get to the top, add marinated fresh fish and vegetables within those layers and proceed to cook for around five hours. The food absorbs all the earthy flavors and develops into this one-of-a-kind dish that you can only experience in Fiji.

Oh yeah, we also have ceviches with coconut cream in them.

Many communities in Fiji still live 100-percent off the land—which means harvesting your own seaweed from the ocean, making your own coconut cream from fresh coconuts, and raising your own cattle and chicken. It rains a lot and everything is so green, so the animals are all generally very happy and everything—fruits, veggies, meats—has such rich, beautiful flavors.

Fiji is a very diverse archipelago country. But if you're driving through either of the biggest islands, Viti Levu and Vanua, where 88 percent of Fiji's population lives, the landscape will change at least six times—from tropical rainforest to arid weather to white sandy beaches to thick rainforests. You can imagine how varied the cuisine is based on all of these landscapes within such a small stretch of land.

My progression into Fijian food came naturally, when I became an executive chef at 29-years old in Australia; that was the turning point. I was really into learning from other chefs, but I eventually climbed up all the ranks and I turned into that chef that cooks were looking up to for new recipes. I've always cooked what I liked to eat, which, for a proud Fijian-Australian like myself, naturally meant Fijian food.

Even now that I just opened up my first restaurant in Los Angeles, E.P. & L.P. (an ode to my love of reggae and massive vinyl collection), I don't really think of food trends, or listen to what the local celebrities want. I moved to Los Angeles from Australia because I liked that you can get ingredients here like holy basil, turmeric, and lemongrass so easily; I think those ingredients haven't been explored here to their full potential. At 30-years old, I'm proud to finally be exposing Fijian cuisine to the world.

Although I am now a ten-hour airplane ride away from Fiji and not just a three-hour one like when I lived in Australia, I still plan on going back at least once a year to continue to learn new Fijian food traditions that I don't know of. In the six months that I've been in Los Angeles so far, I've already been once.

As told to Javier Cabral