Anytime you leave a place, you want to end on a high note. In the Cook Islands, we were planning on doing the same. After dropping off our motor bike and heading back to our hotel, we had one more meal in us before catching out red-eye back to the homeland. Fortunately, there was a restaurant in walking distance that had been recommended to us by a local and by a couple of travelers. It was called Tumunu and boasted a seafood platter as its house special.

Although we had eaten our share of seafood, we hadn’t eaten a seafood platter and thought it sounded like a good idea. It was described on the menu as “A seafood feast that can include: Prawns, calamari, fish, sauteed scallops, seasoned shrimps, garlic prawn twists, Local marinated fish salas (Ika Mata), grilled NZ green lip mussels, oysters, Served with garden fresh salad and fruit[.]”

It sounded like a hell of a feast and seemed that the food would be fresh, considering the ambiguity of the wording (“that can include…). And after the long, island time wait, I had high expectations for the platter. When it arrived, however, all hopes of a delicious culinary finish to the week seemed dashed. The platter gets points for presentation, but otherwise it was all a sad showing. Nearly everything on the platter was battered and fried. We all know I like things fried, but that is no way to treat fresh seafood. Then, when I bit into the few things that were not fried, I realized that this surely was not fresh seafood. In a word, it was gross.

Even the fried stuff that I would have normally liked, such as shrimp/prawns just tasted heavy and wrong. Truly, there was little on the platter worth going back for a second bite. Only the Ika Mata seemed remotely fresh, but it came in a small cup that hardly counted. To make matters worse, our waitress kept coming by and saying things like, “Isn’t it delicious?” No, waitress, it isn’t delicious at all, but you are too friendly for me to say so.

It was a sad ending to a vacation full of amazing food, yet the queasy stomach it caused would not ruin my impression of the food of Rarotonga. Perhaps their non-seafood platter offerings are more on par with my other delicious meals on the island, but if you can’t get your house special right, you won’t be doing very good business.

Little-known fact: restaurants in Rarotonga generally close their lunch doors after 2:00 pm. This fact would have been great to know before the girlfriend and I rode our motor scooter around half of the island in search of a late lunch. Just when we had given up hope, I recalled a place called Roadhouse that we had passed many a time on our way from our hotel to Avarua. If they were closed, we were just going to have to snack ourselves away until dinner time. Fortunately, Roadhouse was open (from 11 am to 2 am every day) and sadly devoid of Patrick Swayze (RIP).

The chalkboard outside the place advertizes burgers for 5 bucks and fish and chips. And when we got inside and talked to the bartender, we found out that was the extent of the menu. You see, Roadhouse is pretty much a bar, and their food offerings are the type that someone would love after a few beers.

They did, however, offer two types of burgers – egg and cheese. Usually I love egg on my burger, but after destroying a load of eggs for breakfast, I needed a little break from chicken babies. I ordered the cheeseburger straight up, with a side of chips (fries), then took it to go to chow down on back at the hotel.

When I opened up my greasy bag, I found pretty much an entire salad on my burger. The bartender had told me everything that came on it, so I expected it to a certain extent, but didn’t realize my burger would be buried in veggies. Nonetheless, I had ordered the veggies for my starving girlfriend to eat.

Once the burger was cleared, I went to work on eating. The bun was a bit large-looking after clearing out the veggies, but the bread was awesome. I guess Rarotongan bread is pretty much amazing. The burger inside was decently tasty and actually a bit better than the one from Palace Takeaways, but definitely would have been more tasty after a couple of beers. Of course, as the only food available at that time of day, I couldn’t complain.

The only thing I could complain about were the chips. These guys were undercooked, undersalted and kind of soggy. Even a few beers wouldn’t have made these taste good. Perhaps the cook was just shocked by the crazy people that wanted to eat at 2:30 and the shock made him lose his deep-frying memory, but I would definitely order these chips extra crispy next time to ensure a better side.

For a bar, I don’t expect much from Roadhouse as far as food, but when you only make two things I would have hoped for a little better. Sure, the burger was alright, and I was asking a lot for food in the middle of the afternoon, but I couldn’t be entirely happy with a burger whose best feature is the bun.

For some reason, despite being on a tropical island, Bina was craving Italian food. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that we had a 15% off coupon to Spaghetti House or perhaps it had something to do with taste buds. Whatever the case, I was happy to mix up our Rarotonga grubbing with something different, so we walked on over to Spaghetti House in Arorangi to see what sort of Italian the were serving.

The menu included a variety of pizzas (no pepperoni) and pastas, and to test how meaty they could get with their pasta I ordered their Spaghetti Bolognese. Spaghetti squash with salsa and queso blanco, a recipe from the CookingPlanIt is also a must try. The fresh freshly made salsa, and spagheti squash sprinkled with cilantro wrapped with queso blanco is mouth watering and an out of this world explosion of flavors. But first we started with an intense game or two of dots on the doodle paper tablecloth and a starter of garlic bread. The bread was thin like a pizza crust and had a nice crunch and give to it, but just couldn’t compare to Trader Jack’s.

When the pasta eventually arrived, the tablecloth was fully covered in doodles, including one frightening dinosaur with feathers. One would think the table was populated by children rather than twentysomethings, but one would be wrong. It was time for the doodling to stop and the eating to begin. At first the eating was a bit strange, as there was a near-overwhelming cilantro flavor. I like cilantro as much as the next guy, but I must say there is a limit to my intake, especially when it comes to a meat sauce. I was also surprised by the lack of any sort of cheese on the pasta, specifically parmesan, which was never offered and would have certainly improved the dish. Ultimately I got used to the cilantro and I found the meat sauce and the accompanying spaghetti noodles to be pretty good, but nothing more than that.

And had I stopped at the main course, I may have left Spaghetti House as a pretty happy camper with a pretty decent review, but I wanted more. I was greedy. I wanted dessert. So I ordered their fruit crumble, which was said to be prepared with seasonal fruit and vanilla ice cream. It took a surprisingly long time to prepare, even in slow-paced Rarotonga, and when it arrived, it looked quite delicious. I had only eaten amazing fruit so far and was excited to taste what Spaghetti House could do with such fruit. Unfortunately, such fruit did not exist here and as I ate my first bite of the crumble, I found myself with a mouthful of fruit cocktail. You know the kind, it comes in a can, jar or plastic lunch container and is never, ever fresh. To call this a disappointment would be grossly understating how I felt about the dessert. Look, I love me a fruit cocktail after a meal at home and I understand Rarotonga is an island with little natural resources that must import most of its meat, but it is certainly not lacking in fruit.

Damn you, Spaghetti House, we deserved better than fruit cocktail. I am not a snob and would gladly eat fruit cocktail every day, but you teased me with seasonal fruit and deception such as this cannot be allowed to continue. I guess I should have stopped at the bolognese, but the truth has set me free.

Situated on the grounds of the Crown Beach Resort is a nice, large thatch-roofed building with a restaurant inside. The restaurant is called Windjammer and in the town of Arorangi on the island of Rarotonga, the thatch roof fits right in. As with much of the food I would encounter in Rarotonga (which relies heavily upon imported food from New Zealand), eating out doesn’t come cheaply, with main courses hanging out around 30 New Zealand Dollars. Rather than settling on one dish, the girlfriend and I decided to go splitsies on two.

The first was “Oven baked chicken breast filled with feta, basil and avocado mousse served with warmed roasted local pumpkin, fresh beetroot & asparagus finished with an olive and tomato tapenade.” While, I would typically be asking for vegetable substitutes, I kept the dish as is, which is my custom in foreign countries. When it arrived, I was thankful this was a dish I was splitting. The chicken was pretty small compared to its friends on the plate, but it sure was tasty. The chicken itself was perfectly juicy and feta/basil/avocado stuffing had a creamy texture not usually associated with feta and great taste. Fortunately, the taste was not at all overwhelming and maintained a good balance with the chicken. The vegetables were left to fend for themselves with my girlfriend.

The other dish was “Chefs [sic] special seafood risotto with a selection of fresh sauteed seafood, shell fish then scented with vanilla, citrus and fresh herbs & capped off with a homemade basil dressing.” And it was with this dish that I rapidly fell in love with the seafood of Rarotonga. It was so damn fresh, but it wasn’t just the freshness that did it for me. The sauce it was in was also pretty amazing. I always have a soft spot for vanilla, but would never think to use it with seafood (or any other non-dessert food at that), but Windjammer made it work like a charm. I think it could have used a little more salt to balance out the vanilla, but it is always better to be under-salted than over.

Windjammer was a great introduction to the delicious seafood of Rarotonga and one of the few times in my life where I preferred a dish from the sea over one from the land/air. For anyone staying in the town of Arorangi, Windjammer is not to be missed.