Food is the icing on Madagascar's tourist cake

Antananarivo, July 14: Most tourists come to Madagascar for its unique wildlife, but the big island off the east coast of Africa has another little-known attraction: food.

"The foie gras is the speciality of my chef," says the youthful proprietor of Ku De Ta, one of a handful of French restaurants in the Malagasy capital, as he points to a menu boasting a mouth-watering selection including escargots and frogs' legs.

Served in small portions on thin wafers of bread, the fattened duck liver turns out to be superb -- and, at about $4, a steal compared with what you would pay in a good Paris restaurant.

A legacy of French rule which ended almost five decades ago, visitors from France say the food is comparable with anything back home -- and it has plenty of local variation as well.

The main local beef comes from zebu, a humped cattle well-suited to the tropics.

At another restaurant, a French tourist, Jerome, raves about his zebu steak which followed a glass of pastis, served in the traditional manner with chilled mineral water.

"This is really done the French way, with lots of garlic," he exudes, a glass of red wine in one hand -- a quite drinkable Bordeaux, of course.

A meal can be topped off with local specialities such as rum flavored with vanilla, a major cash crop on the island.

Bureau Report