Kiribati
Swamp-taro babai, coconut in everything, and lagoon-fresh sashimi on remote equatorial atolls.
Kiribati is a scatter of low equatorial atolls where salt soil and scarce fresh water make farming brutally hard, so the food comes from the sea and the coconut palm. The prestige crop is babai, giant swamp taro grown for years in hand-dug pits mulched down to the freshwater lens and served at feasts. Around it: reef fish and tuna sashimi minutes out of the lagoon, breadfruit in season, and palusami, taro leaves baked soft in coconut cream in the earth oven — widely called the national dish.
Coconut is the backbone — water to drink, cream in nearly every dish, and sap tapped daily into karewe toddy that's drunk fresh and sweet or aged sour, then boiled into kamaimai syrup poured over rice and babai. Because ships come rarely, imported rice and tinned meat fill the gaps. Eat at a maneaba feast of umu-cooked palusami and reef fish, and you've tasted a genuinely far-flung corner of the world.
- Palusami (taro leaves in coconut cream)
- Te babai (giant swamp taro)
- Ika mata (coconut-cured raw fish)
- Reef fish and sashimi
- Te bua toro ni baraki (baked swamp-taro cake)
- Kamaimai (coconut-toddy syrup)
- Karewe (coconut toddy)
