The cuisine of Vanuatu () incorporates fish, root vegetables such as taro and yams, fruits, and vegetables. Most island families grow food in their gardens, and food shortages are rare. Papayas, pineapples, mangoes, plantains, and sweet potatoes are abundant through much of the year. Coconut milk and cream are used to flavor many dishes. Most food is cooked using hot stones or through boiling and steaming; little food is fried. Since Vanuatu is one of the few South Pacific regions influenced by the outside world, Vanuatu's food has a multicultural nature.
Core ingredients
Vanuatu foods have several core ingredients used such as yam, taro, banana, coconut, sugarcane, tropical nuts, pigs, greens, fowls and seafood. Native people in Vanuatu usually grow most of their food except luxury foods such as rice or tinned fish.
Traditional drink
Kava, a traditional psychoactive non-alcoholic drink, is extremely popular in Vanuatu. A once-prestigious beverage brewed from Piper methysticum, it is commonly drunk at dusk, before dinner, mostly by men but increasingly by women. While it has mild narcotic and relaxing effects on the individual, it is mostly appreciated for the relaxed social atmosphere it is traditionally associated with, both in urban and rural areas, in the context of the nakamal.
Kava is a well known, a beverage commonly drunk across the South Pacific, as it is strongly tied to sacred traditions and custom beliefs. It has become a popular pass-time activity, a means to de-stress from the pressures of social, corporate and personal life. However, in some social groups, the original function and etiquette that accompanies the activity has somewhat lost its reverence. It can be abused.
Traditional foods
The national dish of Vanuatu is lap lap. Lap lap is a baked pudding. It is made up of grated yam, banana, manioc, or taro that is mixed with coconut milk and salt, wrapped up in banana leaves, then baked under hot volcanic stones. There is a variety of lap lap styles from island to island. Malekula has a unique technique in they way they bake their Lap lap, specifically called 'Sosor', where they place a glowing hot volcanic stone in the center of the unbaked pudding, with chicken wings, onion and tomato on top of the stone. They then squeeze coconut milk over the whole pudding, wrap it up and bake it. Once baked, the Sosor is opened, the stone removed and all the meat is cooked (steamed from the coconut milk), a well is made in the centre of the pudding and more coconut milk is squeezed out as a dipping sauce. The local markets often have stall hawkers selling local lap-lap with various toppings e.g. chicken, beef, octopus or fried fish.
Another popular dish is , is a steamed roll of grated banana, manioc, yam, taro, or flour that is wrapped in banana leaves and covered in coconut milk.
Flying foxes are also captured, kept in cages, and eaten as a stew in some islands
The traditional diet is also rich in marine-life animals. Many of the rural villages that live near the coastal areas (or lake and rivers) are well-known skilled fishermen, and incorporate all manner of shellfish, deep sea and reef fish into their daily household meals. Locals are celebrated as skillful fishermen if they are able to catch deep sea fish such as Tuna, Barracuda or Marlin, with traditional methods. Other types of marine life commonly eaten are Red Emperor, Parrotfish, Cod, Trevally, common periwinkle shellfish, lobster and sandcrabs. The Coconut crab is also considered as a unique delicacy in Vanuatu. However, many restaurants in Vanuatu have stopped serving this dish as the crab is at risk of becoming an extinct species.
Modern Vanuatu cuisine
During the French-British colonial times, there was an influx of migrated groups of people from other countries, some of which were also French and British colonised countries. Some of these groups were from Vietnam, Wallis & Futuna, Fiji, China, New Zealand, Australia and European expats. The migrated populations tended to live in the capitals of Vanuatu, e.g. Port Vila and Luganville, and hence introduced foreign foods such as French bread, Vietnamese spring rolls, known as 'Nems' and fried doughnuts, known as 'gateau huit' (deep fried and shaped into the number '8', or the infamous 'local bread').
The legacy of these migrated populations have remained in modern-day Vanuatu cuisine and continue to be popular, in the country's now Independent state.