Fiji Style Desi Dhaba

Indian curries, pseudo-Chinese dishes, tropical vegetables, drinking snacks, meats and kava, a popular Fijian drink known for its narcotic, dope-like effects. Fiji Style Desi Dhaba serves a crazy array of different dishes and cuisines.

Try brightly coloured steaming slices of steamed cassava and taro. They taste like extra starchy, flavour-enhanced potatoes. Have it with a bowl of shredded greens, chicken and fresh vegetables, all swimming in a dark-brown gelatinous soup. That’s the chop suey and with the cassava it’s remarkably reminiscent of Sunday-roast gravy and baked potatoes. Unsurprisingly it’s one of the most popular dishes at Desi Dhaba and on the streets of Fiji.

The curries include a dark, heavily spiced chicken curry; an orange prawn curry with a mustard flavour; or the specialty duck curry. Desi Dhaba’s chef Ranjan Devi Sing (Queen Rani for short) makes all the curries from scratch. They combine ground and roasted masala with the crunch and pop of extra seeds and cassia bark bits. Most of the time curries are ordered Thali-style (south Indian) and come with accompanying rice, dhal, chutney and Queen Rani’s homemade roti. If you’re going to try kava, you may as well call in and book the restaurant’s enormous audio system for a night of Fijian karaoke.