Marquesas/Nuku Hiva: Fafaru

Fafaru is raw tuna marinated in fermented seawater. Despite sounding ok, It’s a Polynesian delight specialty that is not for everyone. Here’s how you prepare it – you take a bucket of seawater, then chop a few raw reef fish whole with heads and guts and dump into this water. You let this stand and ferment for over a week. The stench is unbearable as it’s clearly deeply rotten flesh by then. Next you strain the water and drop large pieces of beautiful fresh raw yellowfin tuna into the liquid to marinate for several hours (or upto a day long). The fish is then eaten as a super delicacy. The stench never disappears so the key is to cover your nose and not breeze at all (and preferable not think about it either). The taste however is quite good, tangy and somewhat spicy as the fish is marinated and even changes color to somewhat cooked). I did eat a whole big piece (witnesses available).
Maps were disabled by the visitor on this site. Click to open the map in a new window.