On the culinary delights and dangers of Palau

Sashimi at Palau Pacific Resort (PPR)

Setting aside the taro and smoked fish, my gastronomical experience here has been positive. Although there is a limited selection of fresh fruit and veggies, there are enough to get by. I spoke to someone who clerked here a while back, and she told me that they waited desperately every two weeks for the ship, holding only a few unripe fruits and vegetables, to come in. Now, quite a bit more is available. There is a budding organic produce market sprouting in Babeldoab and we in Koror are sometimes the beneficiaries. Fresh lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and spinach are the most common local veggies. Shockingly, in spite of the tropical climes, there is little tropical fruit, except for coconuts, of course. Every once in a while we are able to snag some juicy papayas, and exceptionally good bananas are in the grocery stores every other day.

While the land doesn’t give Palauans much, the sea isn’t so stingy. I’ve been a vegetarian for a long time and the switch to pescatarianism for this year has been one of the better life choices I’ve made. I’ve consumed more raw fish in the last month than I thought possible. (Huzzah, mercury poisoning! Completely worth it.) Every restaurant has ridiculous melt-in-your-mouth sashimi for relatively cheap.

While I haven’t gotten around to the killing, gutting, or cooking myself, I have had the good judgment to attach myself to people who will feed me fish. Holly and Ryan took me to the local fishmonger and we picked out a red snapper and a unicorn fish (not a narwhal!).

It's too bad pictures can't convey smells.

Ryan expertly filleted the snapper and grilled it in banana leaves plucked from their yard. The unicorn fish just goes on the grill whole and comes out delicious. The prelude to dinner was a game of bags. The digestif was staring off the patio as the sun went down.

Bags! Holly is sad that her bags game came in Stanford colors.

But not too sad.

Not a bad way to spend a Sunday night.

I’m sure the snapper and unicorn were quite fresh, but definitely not as fresh as the fish that Aussie Ben and Ryan caught last weekend. They went out in a squall to fish. Even though they almost died (according to Ryan; Ben said the danger level was only a 3), they did not return empty handed. I don’t know what kind of fish it was. I don’t care. I almost wept when I saw the giant plate of sashimi (one of two!) that they put in front of me. Sadly, I had to share it. Fortunately, Ben’s wife Neioko also made a magical seaweed and cucumber salad to go with it.

I’ve hosted and co-hosted more modest dinner parties. We’ve made pizza (shout out to Max for the roasted beet/carrot pizza recipe!), chili, and taro tacos (the only reasonable thing to do with taro is pour in a pouch of taco seasoning and pray).

Taro Taco Tuesday!!!!!

In terms of restaurants, Palau is surprisingly adequate. There’s decent Thai food and amazing Indian food and a smattering of Palauan/American/Pan-Asian food. The latter are usually rolled into one restaurant. Palau is the only place I’ve ever been able to get a burrito, blackened sashimi, and spam omelets at the same establishment.

I have no pangs of regret not eating meat here. In spite of a growing awareness of diabetes and other diet-related illnesses, the staples here are still horrifically bad for human beings to eat: spam with rice being the best (worst?) example. In a country with little medical infrastructure, obesity is a heavy burden on society. For example, many older Palauans have experienced kidney problems associated with diabetes—but there is only one dialysis machine for the whole country. Many Palauans simply can’t get treatment. The result is early death.

I read an interesting argument contending that the United States (represented by spam) and Japan (represented by rice) jointly and severally flipped the food economy of the Pacific islands on its head. The problem used to be scarcity. Folks here survived for generations on taro and fish. Now the threat is glut. Folks who had harnessed the sea for subsistence suddenly had cheap, and empty, calories.

But it’s hard to look the cheap-food-laden gift horse in the mouth. Prior to the Coming of Spam (e.g., the liberation(ish) of the islands by the Americans after World War II), Palau experienced an utterly devastating famine. Most of the population was cut off by the American occupation from its gardens and fishing spots. All of Palau found itself in the middle of Babeldoab, in the woods, which contained almost nothing in the way of food sources. Not only were all the Palauans trapped on Babeldoab, but tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers were there as well, also starving. So it’s pretty understandable that the last few generations of Palauans have been raised to appreciate the cheap and plentiful food. Collective memory lingers, and Doritos are objectively delicious.

Nowadays, Palau is doing amazing things to deal with the most delicious deadly sin. Free physical fitness opportunities abound (races, basketball games, judo, MMA, paddling, “Insanity” fitness videos played in the National Gym, etc.); “biggest loser” contests are held by most employers; and vegetable gardens are appearing at local schools. In fact, I would say Palau has done a way better job at tackling obesity head-on than the United States where an anti-vegetable stance constitutes part of the platform of an entire political party. Here, folks talk frankly and sincerely about their health struggles and encourage each other to lose weight, not to look like a magazine cover (I don’t think Kate Moss is the Palauan ideal of beauty), but to improve their lives.

But there remains a lot of spam on the shelves, so perhaps my rosy outlook is a little naïve. And in the honto, the boondocks, canned meat and rice is still the most popular meal. Cosmopolitan Koror may quickly be turning itself into Boulder, but the fitness craze hasn’t reached the countryside.

Meanwhile, I am a lucky beneficiary of the public health push. Free Zumba classes! Fresh lettuce! Hopefully, this stuff will catch on.