Dear ETW readers, we just hit a milestone: country 150! Our 150th country is Vanuatu, which we recently visited with two friends, Aaron and Philip. Little known as a tourist destination for Americans, we all found the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu to be an unexpected delight. According to our research, the food of Vanuatu is near-impossible to find outside of the country itself, so we suspect the only way to eat its cuisine is to befriend some cooks from Vanuatu or to visit the country itself! Vanuatuan cuisine is a mixture of Melanesian, French, and British influences, reflecting the diverse inhabitants and colonial history of this island nation. Thanks to French influence, today you can even get a great croissant in Port Vila!
However, the holy grail we were seeking was the national dish of Vanuatu: Laplap. Laplap is a mixture of mashed cassava, taro, and yam cooked in banana leaves with coconut milk. Laplap is traditionally cooked in an underground earthen oven (called an umu), and takes hours to prepare and bake. As such, it is mostly now served on only on Sundays, holidays, and special occasions. We scoured restaurants around the capitol city of Port Vila, but none were serving Laplap. Normally, you can find Laplap at the Central Market, however, that had been closed since the recent December 2024 earthquake that hit the Central Business District hard. Fortunately, when we visited in January, the country was well on the road to recovery, and we were urged by our tour company, Vanuatu Ecotours to still come visit, as the country’s economy heavily relies on tourism.
While traveling with Vanuatu Ecotours, we let our tour guide Roy know that we were seeking Laplap, which we had previously contacted the company about. However, logistical issues were making it seem that the Laplap might not actually be possible to acquire. At the 11th hour, our traveling buddy Aaron took special pains to make sure our Laplap dreams were realized through an alternative plan. Thanks to Aaron’s efforts, Roy made absolutely sure that our group got our desired Laplap before our time in Vanuatu ended. He contacted a local cook Eillen in Port Vila, who prepared it for us from scratch (and was paid for her efforts). She was so kind and lovely, she made 2 giant servings of Laplap, one for Roy and one for the 4 of us. She couldn’t have been nicer, and we are forever grateful for her efforts.
The Laplap was wrapped carefully in banana leaves and aluminum foil, and delivered to us in a neat package. We ran into a bit of a conundrum, as we had no where to eat, and had some time to kill before our flight out of Port Vila. So, as a result, we actually ate the Laplap in the international airport terminal! We bought some drinks with the last of our local currency at the coffee shop and the kind staff allowed us to eat at their tables. So, with an assortment of coffees and teas, we carefully unwrapped our Laplap and dug in. We were impressed by all of the layered flavors and the significant amount of work that surely went into preparing this dish. The Laplap was cooked with bone-in chicken, which was tender and flavorsome. The mashed root vegetables were formed into cakes, and were covered with island cabbage leaves (apparently an Efate island touch) and coconut milk, interspersed with the chicken. All of the flavors melded together beautifully, and the dish was more than the sum of its parts. So, our final memory of Vanuatu was enjoying its fabulous national dish with friends. It doesn’t get much better than that in the ETW universe!
Eating The World 