Me’a Kai - The Food and Flavours of the South Pacific - Farmer-to-Table "How a cookbook can empower rural economies"

Abstract: Robert Oliver is writing a cookbook to showcase Pacific Island cuisine, not only for food and book lovers, but primarily to elevate the attitude and relationship between Pacific Islanders themselves and their culinary culture. Tourism is the largest economic machine in the South Pacific Islands, yet most of the hotel food product is imported. At the same time, there is abundance of land and farming skills and farmers. Robert’s presentation discusses how to join the two sectors: the benefits, the barriers, and a exploration of solutions.

Biography: New Zealand-born, Robert Oliver was raised in Suva, Fiji. Over the past 25 years, Robert has worked as a Chef in Fiji, New York City, Miami, Sydney, Las Vegas, the US Virgin Islands, Barbados, St Lucia, and Trinidad, and has created restaurant ventures that are “tropically concepted”. Among many ventures, his Las Vegas’ Rumjungle - one of the USA’s largest restaurants – offers a blend of cuisines of the world’s tropical zones: Caribbean, Fijian, and Brazilian. The immensely popular Rumjungle, Mandalay Bay, was awarded “Best New Restaurant” by the Las Vegas Review Journal. In Miami Beach in 2000, Robert opened SUVA, a modern interpretation of Pacific and Polynesian cuisine, garnering critical national press attention.

More recently he developed restaurants for the Almond Resort group’s St Lucia and Barbados properties, establishing a successful purchasing infrastructure with a large group of local farmers. Food costs went down, the food was fresher and better, and visitors were eating locally grown foodstuffs, which further enhanced their experience of the island.