MALAGASY CUISINE

Go at the discovery of an inventive cuisine that mixes exotic products with products from temperate zones in most great hotel- restaurants. Then indulge yourself in tasting a more authentic cuisine at any “hotely gasy” or at a malagasy family table. However, always ask for a bottle of mineral water or soda, unless you wish to have a traditional hot drink (for which water has been boiled): coffee, tea, “rano vola” (water boiled with burnt cooked rice). Malagasy cuisine revolves around rice, an emblematic cereal in Madagascar, which holds a world record for its consumption. No wonder it is included in a number of proverbs (“Love is like a small rice plant: transplanted, it grows somewhere else”; “do not praise your own merits like the rice boiling in the cooking pot”,..) and comprises several varieties such as the honey and hazel lavou- red endemic “rojomena”. The great classics of malagasy cuisine are “romazava” or “ravitoto” but a few specialities are worth discovering (“tsikorakorana” or big shrimps, “drakaka” or big crab or “amalona”, eel).