Madagascar
An island that eats rice three times a day, in French, African and Asian flavours over a mountain of vary.
Nowhere loves rice like Madagascar. Vary turns up at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and a meal is really rice plus a laoka — the thing that goes on top. At a roadside hotely you point at a pot and get a steaming plate for a few thousand ariary, the island's African, French and Southeast Asian roots all landing on one spoon.
The dishes to find are the home ones. Romazava, the national beef-and-leafy-greens stew, its broth sharpened with bitter brèdes mafana leaves that tingle the tongue; ravitoto, pounded cassava leaves slow-cooked with fatty pork; a fat zebu steak from the humped highland cattle. Breakfast might be mofo gasy, little fermented rice-flour cakes off a street griddle, with sweet condensed-milk coffee. Keep a jar of fiery sakay chilli close, order a cold THB beer, and eat like a Malagasy: rice first, everything else in support.
- Vary (rice
- at every meal)
- Romazava (beef & greens stew)
- Ravitoto (cassava leaves with pork)
- Mofo gasy (fermented rice cakes)
- Zebu steak (grilled highland beef)
- Sakay (fiery chilli condiment)
- Three Horses Beer (THB)
