Me’a Kai: The Food and Flavours of the South Pacific
Cookbooks Culinary Travel Ethnic & Regional Cooking Food Photography Cultural Heritage South Pacific Cuisine Traditional Recipes Contemporary Island Cooking
Me’a Kai: The Food and Flavours of the South Pacific is the only comprehensive, chef-tested collection of traditional and contemporary recipes from Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands and beyond. At nearly 500 pages and 1.7 kg, this 2010 Random House hardcover is a heavyweight both physically and culinarily: every dish has been photographed on location, giving home cooks a vivid, step-by-step tour of island kitchens, markets and lovo pits. Robert Oliver—New Zealand–born, Fiji-raised chef and TV host—spent three years island-hopping to gather family recipes and adapt them for modern pantries, so you get authentic flavours (palusami, kokoda, taro-leaf parcels) without hunting for impossible ingredients.
The book’s real value lies in its practical design for young-adult and adult cooks who want more than glossy pictures. Spices are cross-referenced, measurements appear in metric and imperial, and each chapter explains sustainable substitutions—perfect if you can’t find fresh breadfruit or yam. Side-bars teach core skills: how to pound kava, build an underground oven, or fold banana-leaf parcels with the same tight seal Samoan aunties use. The result is a kitchen manual that doubles as a cultural handbook, making it easy to host a full Polynesian feast or simply add a bright pineapple-coconut salsa to weekday grilled fish.
Collectors prize this first-edition hardcover for its thick, tactile pages and panoramic photography shot on 35 mm film; copies in clean, tight condition—like this one—are increasingly scarce. The dust-jacket shows the light shelf-wear typical of a well-loved reference, but interior pages are immaculate: no stains, annotations, or dog-eared corners, so the 300-plus images retain their original saturated colour. Whether you’re a culinary traveller, a Pacific-island expat craving taste-of-home, or a chef curating a global pantry, Me’a Kai delivers the authentic, healthy, flavour-forward cuisine that put the South Pacific on the world food map.
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