Five-star Fiji offers a taste of paradise

Visitors to the beautiful archipelago have an increasing appetite for luxury... so the food has had to improve – and it has, writes Jo McCarroll.

It is fair to say that most people don’t visit Fiji for the food. The swaying palm trees and the white sandy beaches, maybe. The amazing swimming and diving, for sure. The generous and hospitable people, absolutely. All these things are certainly part of what draws more than 800,000 visitors a year to this South Pacific archipelago. But the food? Not so much.

There’s a perception that many Fijian resorts offer ‘‘family-friendly’’ food, much of it fried and available from an all-day buffet. And, in the past at least, there was an element of truth to that, says Mark Leslie, general manager of Vomo Island Fiji, a luxury resort that occupies a privately owned, 87-hectare island in the Mamanuca Island group, on the cusp of the Yasawa Islands.

‘‘Fiji always had a really bad name for food,’’ he says. ‘‘Possibly because the Aussies and the Kiwis are just more forgiving than travellers in Europe and America and so they got away with it.’’

South-African-born Leslie is a Michelin-starred chef. He took on the general manager’s role at Vomo five years ago after managing luxury resorts in Kenya, the Maldives and the Seychelles. When he moved to the new role there were limited fivestar offerings across Fiji, he says.

‘‘The luxury market has never really been here,’’ he explains. ‘‘A few of the standalone islands offered a five-star experience but not many, and those that did were adults-only so you couldn’t take your kids. Even the big hotel brands weren’t as good as they should be here. The brand promise that they would deliver elsewhere in the world wasn’t what they offered here.’’

In fact, Leslie was repeatedly told by industry figures that you ‘‘couldn’t’’ offer that same standard in the islands as resorts attained at other holiday hotspots elsewhere in the world.

‘‘We were told time and again that you can’t do ‘luxury’ in Fiji, that Fiji isn’t like that and we were going to struggle. But it’s not true. The team I work with here is as good as any team in the world.’’

It’s true the offering at Vomo is unashamedly luxurious: from the designer bed linen in your private bure to the complimentary L’Occitane toiletries, and the Balinese massage on offer at Vomo’s Kui Spa to the cocktails at the adults-only Rocks Bar positioned at the western tip of the island and perfectly positioned to watch the sunset.

But the food is a vital part of what Vomo is known for: the a la carte menu mixes Indo-Fijian flavours with South-East Asian and Pacific rim cuisines. Chefs are able to draw on their own experience and their own food heritages – Vomo’s executive chef, Nicholas Samaras, is Australian and chef de cuisine, Thushan Iranga, is from Sri Lanka.

The menu changes daily but in every dish the fresh seasonal ingredients are allowed to shine: try salmon poke, served with ginger ponzu and toasted nori; bananaleaf-wrapped fish of the day with ginger and sesame-tossed greens and a tomato and coriander salsa; or crispy duck breast served with snow peas, mung bean sprouts and micro greens.

Some of what is served is grown on the island, including papayas, breadfruit and bananas – the chefs also often raid the rosemary, thyme and lemongrass growing in Leslie’s own garden – and the resort also runs a farm on Viti Levu (the largest

There’s an increasing appetite from visitors to Fiji for five-star luxury.

In the past, Fiji had a bad name for food, but the expanding luxury market there has seen standards rise to meet visitors’ expectations.

Great fresh food is one of Vomo Island Fiji’s big draws: ‘‘When you get to the price point where we are at, people want good food,’’ says Mark Leslie.