Food & Drink

Malagasy cuisine often involves rice dishes with sauces, meat, vegetables and seasoning, served with hot peppers. Some specialities include:

• ravitoto (meat and leaves cooked together)
• ro (a mixture of herbs and leaves with rice)
• beef and pork marinated in vinegar, water and oil, then cooked with leaves, onion, pickles and other vegetables and seasoned with pimento
• ramazava (leaves and pieces of beef and pork browned in oil)
• vary amid'anana (rice, leaves or herbs, meat and sometimes shrimps)

Alcoholic drinks include toaka gasy, which is distilled from cane sugar and rice; litchel (an aperitif made from lychees) and betsa (fermented alcohol). Ranon 'apango is non-alcoholic and made from burnt rice.