August 27, 2007
Eating in Madagascar has very little consistency; it's basically a throw of dice. There is so much variation that ordering the same meal from the same restaurant on two consecutive days may result in two different meals. And, not slightly different, but different enough to label one good and the other bad. It's disheartening.
Part of the trouble may be that we must often eat in varied circumstances: hotel restaurants, tourist restaurants, Gasy restaurants or Indian snack shops. Or, we eat street food, or picnic from the supermarket, Gasy market, taxi-brousse (people sell things through the windows when the brousse stops, or even just slows down), or cook with our camp stove. Each one offers completely different choices.
Hotel and tourist restaurants are vastly more expensive (6,000 Ariary - 12,000+ Ariary / about $3 - $6+ per person) and undeniably bland, or just plain bad, although they sometimes seem like the only option. To begin with the food is faux-western, prepared on request and takes hours to arrive, which, after a long day of hiking, is just annoying. It's not unusual for us to order food and then sit at the table and finish a package of crackers, correctly anticipating a one, two, or three hour wait before we are served. When the food does arrive, it would be charitable to call it boring. More than once I've order pasta, rice, French fries or an omelet and been shocked that the food had no flavor, no oil, not even salt. A couple weeks ago, I ordered spaghetti with tomato sauce. After several hours, I was given a dish of boiled noodles with no sauce, only the faintest tint of red. Leah and I questioned the manager.
"White people like very bland food, and if you want some exotic spices, like say, salt, you need to special order it," the manager replied. Maybe those weren't her exact words, but that was the gist.
This has become so maddening that Leah and I have sworn off tourist places for the remainder of the Madagascar portion of the trip, even if this means long walks into nearby villages or picnicking with little more than packages of biscuits.
Gasy restaurants can be more interesting (1,000 Ar - 2,000 Ar / $0.5 - $1). The foundation of most Gasy meals is boiled rice. A huge plate of it is presented in front of you, always with a fork and a big spoon. In a small dish to the side are tasty bits of beef, chicken, fish or, rarely, vegetables. Also present is a bowl of lightly flavored water to be added to the rice. Sometimes a drink made from boiled water at the bottom of the rice pot is included. The food can be good, but usually, especially for me, near the end of the meal, it feels as though I'm merely fueling.
Food only really starts to get exciting when we venture into the Indian snack shops or Gasy markets for street food, although much of the quick, hot food is deep fried: samosas; fried, battered bananas; and, fried, battered bread (Leah loves this curiously redundant food), just to name a few. There are also baked goods (including mufkash, a lightly sweetened rice flour cake/bread), soups, potato salads, cold noodles with vegetables, salads, sandwiches, brochettes and boiled cassava, to name a few more.
Supplementing all of this, we buy from individual vendors: fruits (pineapples, oranges, mandarins, passion fruits, bananas, papayas and coconuts), vegetables (tomatoes, green onions, garlic and corn), roasted peanuts, peanut brittle, wild-flower honey, donut holes and coconut toffee. And, from little shops or supermarkets we buy bottled water, yogurt, French pastries, breads, chocolate (made in Mad!) and crackers.
Finally, when camping there are lots of staples, vegetables and spices available, which is part of the reason we enjoy camping so much.
And now all this writing about food has made me hungry, so we're off to the market for another roll of the dice.
