Tiko's Seafood Restaurant & Bar

So there is this guy, maybe his name is Tiko, maybe it isn't, either way no one seems to give a shit. Anyway so he gets hold of a boat somehow and turns into a floating restaurant. He moors it on Stinson Parade across from Sukuna Park, and starts charging the punters of Suva shitloads of money for steak and seafood. A legend of Suva eating ensues, and for the next three decades people with expense accounts and the bakewa that follow them eat well and in a unique setting.

Now this place is way out of the normal budget usually covered here at LiS, but when there are others willing to pay, and a half reasonable camera phone is handy, one is duty bound to bend guidelines and sacrifice one's time and stomach for a higher principle: "Never miss an opportunity to namu wealthier relatives".

So there is a menu on a blackboard, and the only thing in single figures is the soup, but since you're all like me and eating on someone else's dime, I'm sure you don't give a rats.

As a bakewa with some experience in these waters, I recommend the Grilled Nuqa with Miti, but you are pretty safe eating anything you are not allergic to. The main courses are large and come with either mash, dalo, or chips.

If you are boring, or are either physically or mentally under the age of 12, you could always have a serve of Fish and Chips. At $14 and no different to what one gets from Hook and Chook or Joli Fryer, it isn't a stunner on the price performance curve. Again, I know we aren't paying for this meal, but if we are going to namu, lets namu smartly!


If you aren't that hungry, ask for the entrée as a main. Above is the crumbed calamari and the grilled baby octopus, two entrées put together to make a lighter mains.

One should always eat ones greens, even if one is a freeloading bastard. Get thee to the salad bar and load up on rourou, bhindi, pumpkin, ota, baseisei, potatoes, pasta etc., and try the chilli vinaigrette and the thousand island dressing.


Vegetables are good for you. Eat your vegetables. Especially when they are paid for.

You can get steaks too, Surf and Turf and that sort of thing, I have no idea if they are any good, but one can rarely go wrong with steak.

It is not the best place for a one hour lunch break. Your order will probably take more than half an hour to get to you, leaving you about 15 minutes to wolf down your food and get back to work. You will also need the time to entertain your sponsor with your scintillating repartee and incisive wit (which is the least you can do for someone buying you lunch).

In Summary

Tiko's Seafood Restaurant & Bar

The boat moored opposite Sukuna Park, Stinson Pde, Suva

Opening Hours:

Buggered if I know but its open for lunch on the weekdays

Spend:

Shitloads

Rating:

Thumbs-up (if someone else is paying)

Maya Dhaba at MHCC

If you are well-connected in the world of internet trivia you may have seen reference to a certain raunchy Burger King ad, allegedly tempting the usually staid people of Singapore.

The good people at The Atlantic have seen fit to address our questions about the efficacy of this sort of food advertising. "No!" they say, "sexy ads drown out the product, diminish brand recall, and often don't reap dividends" ... and then embed a plethora of examples to prove their point.

Just because Fiji is spared this sort of advertising, doesn't mean that we are off the hook when it comes to "food with sexual innuendo."

Enter the mighty dhosa: an lusty South Indian delicacy with unavoidable phallic connotations, the signature dish of Maya Dhaba at MHCC.



Undeniable shock and awe value. A tasty, hearty meal, the chicken dosa goes for $8.90; the (vegetarian) masala dorsa for $6.90. Each is served up with a side of coconut chutney and a bowl of sambar.



The biryani ($8.90 for chicken, Goat/Lamb for $1 extra) is also worthy of your attention. Both the biryani and the dorsa are cooked to order.



Tandoori chicken starts at $3.50 for a quarter of a bird. The food warmer offers a variety of meat and vegetable curries in various combinations (with rice and drink) ranging up to $8.50. The usual caveats about eating food with a dairy component from the food warmer apply. Plain and garlic naan are also available.



The ever present scourge of the food court, the coke fridge, offers up the usual range. But! for those of you who demand a more authentic experience, there is a choice of Sweet or Mango Lassi.

An extensive range of Indian sweets rounds out this offering.

For me, the success of this little food court outlet is that every time I eat here, it makes me want to eat at their parent restaurant on Victoria Parade ... though that is an experience better suited to dinner and a larger budget than is sensible for lunch.

Thumbs-up for bucking the boring food-court routine, staying affordable and offering one of Suva's most visually provocative dishes.

In Summary

Maya Dhaba

MHCC Food Court, Thomson Street, Suva

Opening Hours:

Mon - Sun: 9:00am - 9:00pm

Spend:

$3.50 - $13 per person

Rating:

Thumbs-up

Joji's at Fiji Showcase

The annual abomination that is Fiji Showcase has rolled around again. The entry fee to the exhibition has gone up ($3.50 this year), the clown hasn't changed, and the same old exhibitors are touting their wares from the floor.

The "food" offerings aren't particularly inspiring this year either, though I do note and applaud the general effort to keep the number of BBQ stalls in check.

But ... Joji's was there! Yes, that Joji's. The Showcase Joji's is a special chicken-only version of the original from under the Civic Centre. $5 for the 'medium' serve, $6 for the large: in all the usual chicken combinations: chop suey, chowmein, chilli, fried rice and blackbean.

On that note, here's our first Lunch in Suva video special: 'Son of Joji' showing us how they make Chilli Chicken in 2 minutes 40 seconds flat.



Truly, the force is strong with this one: fire, wok and chicken do his bidding.

There are a couple of other stalls that bear mention:

There is a new entrant in the hot-dog category offering a "German frankfurter with sauerkraut". The frankfurter didn't look, taste or speak German (in fact it looked and tasted remarkably like the Foods Pacific 'dog being sold a few stalls down), but the sauerkraut was definitely sauerkraut. At $3.50, this is probably not a valid justification for a trip to Showcase ... but it may help redeem the visit if you were there for other reasons.

Also, worth a mention is the FRIEND's Fiji stall: I'm a fan of their excellent tamarind chutney, and supply of the big bottles is a little irregular in the supermarkets; so get yourself a stash straight from the source.

Most of the other food stalls can be ignored: Wish Bone, Curry House, KFC, et al can be got from their usual locations without paying the $3.50 Showcase tax.

Oh! And someone is selling cans of V for $2.50 each ... that's the cheapest I've seen it in a while.

Noodles King

Located in the old Fiji Times building on Gordon Street, Noodles King has dared to try something new: noodles! This latest addition to the asian dining scene (if you could call it that) sits opposite 2 other eateries that have challenged the status quo -- Singh's Curry House & Roma's Hook and Chook -- and so is in good company as it sets about provoking Suva's stagnant notions of what Chinese food should be.



There seems too have been some doubt about the name: the large light-box outside the shop seems, at first glance, to proclaim "Noodle King". Closer inspection reveals the addition of a small 's', reassuring us that this place deals exclusively in the plural (and more generous) style of noodle serve. Noodles King it is!

The menu is simple, the prices are cheap.

$6.80 will buy the house special, King Noodles (from Noodles King: clever, no?) (below) is a large bowl of thick home-made noodles in a bland broth topped with a bed of cabbage, chicken, pork, fish balls, a battered prawn, some raw carrots julienne and garnished with dhania/cilantro/corriander leaves.



The broth seems intended for personal customisation: bowls of chilli oil, soy sauce and salt are provided for this purpose (pictured below). The noodles are accompanied by a small side salad of shredded, vinegared vegetables: various combinations of radish, bean sprouts, carrot and slivers of raw onion have been sighted.



$7.00 gets you to the top of the pyramid: Prawn Noodles. Unless you've got a particular hankering for prawns, drop down to the King Noodles; they're far more interesting.

Noodles with gravy is the cheapest option at $3.80. The curiously named Fry sauce noodles (below) tops $4.20 worth of noodles with fried egg, soy sauce, sesame, and shallots. Other options are Beef, Chicken, Pork, Fish balls, and Egg (sunny-side-up). Takeaway or eat-in.



Suva's sad culinary bottom-feeders are also provided for in the form of chips with the usual chicken or sausage decoration, and a token smattering of the usual pseudo-chinese food-warmer offerings ... why anyone would want to eat this trash when coooked-to-order noodley goodness is available for the same price is beyond me. Coke and Pepsi fridges provide the usual drinks range.

This eatery seems a little haphazard in it's decor: yellow-green walls, blue and pink feature lights on the wall, silver ceiling fans. The eclectic ambience ranged from Eurodance to Chinese folk music to classical symphony: obviously from the well-shuffled MP3 collection of a rapacious download hero. The one redeeming touch was the food pictures on the walls: these were probably not taken in the shop, were not labelled and had "Noodle King" (rather than Noodles King) emblazoned across the bottom ... but to their great credit, all depicted food that could be ordered from the menu.



Kania Tiko held forth at some length on the shortcomings of the orange plastic seats: ill-considered ergonomics, a conspiracy to tip him onto the floor, and the unbucketly alignment of what looked like a bucket seat. Given that this is the worst criticism he could come up with -- and that it was not aimed at the food -- we should probably take this as a wholehearted endorsement of the product.

Places were set with a serviette and a little packet of 'Cool Air' breath mints, a nice touch.

Thumbs-up for trying something different and breaking the usual 'chop suey, chowmein, soup' menu rut that Suva's Chinese restaurants have become stuck in.

In Summary

Noodles King

Old Fiji Times Building, Gordon Street, Suva

Opening Hours:

Mon - Sat: 9:00am - 6:00pm

Spend:

$3.80 - $7 per person

Rating:

Thumbs-up

Le Pain de Mie

The Faith Based Encyclopaedia claims that "pain de mie" is "a type of sliced, packaged bread" similar to "pullman loaf or regular sandwich bread". Given that they don't sell anything like that there it seems like a moronic name, and since most of us don't speak frog we can't pronounce it properly anyway. Therefore most normal humans just call it either 'Samabula Bakery', 'French Bakery', or 'Big Red'.

This establishment sits at the base of Waimanu Road, across the road from the post office. It is a truly hideous building, I can only hope that the cheque from Vodafone was a large one.
Now lets look at their famous pie:

It is an impressive piece of pastry and meat, lets have a look inside.

Picky Eater disses this good shit and talks up the HBK alternative because of some pap about "moistness" vs "dryness" which is too nonsensical to repeat here. My only response is that the above looks and tastes like that it came from an actual chicken, whereas the HBK chicken pie filling is some sort of extruded chicken paste. The HBK might be moist, but is it real?

The pies are $3 each. The pastry is excellent. Get yourself some hot english mustard and work it into the filling and you have a splendid meal.

They also have danishes and quiches for $2 each and croissants for $0.80. I haven't eaten enough of these to have a useful opinion on them, but I'm certain they won't be able to sneak them into your South Beach diet.


The mince loaf is a favourite of the local FIT students, it is a long loaf cut along the spin and filled with curried mince.


They'll pretty much stick this curried mince on just about anything they sell. Order a whole loaf and they'll ask you how many pieces you want it divvied up into before they pack it. Not the healthiest meals you'll ever have, but certainly one of the cheapest at $1.80.

This is a cream loaf. It's a long loaf with cream in in it. Meh.

There are three Coke fridges, that aren't particularly well stocked. If you were looking for a bottle of Frank's or some other fancy drink you are shit out of luck. You usually will find a Coke or a sprite, but that it is not guaranteed.

There are no prices on the board. This is odd.

One other thing you can do here that is not particularly well advertised is that you can bring your own pork or chicken and stick in their ovens. The price varies according to size of the meat you bring, approximately $5 for two chickens or thereabouts.

For providing some of the cheapest lunches in Suva, thus really killing it on the price-performance curve, we give the Big Red Samabula French Bakery a thumbs up.

In Summary

Le Pain de Mie

Waimanu Rd, Samabula

Opening Hours:

Monday - Sunday: 24 hours/day

Spend

$0.60 - $3.00 per person

Verdict

Thumbs up