However, always ask for a bottle of mineral water or soda, unless you wish to have a traditional hot drink ( where water has been boiled): coffee, tea, “rano vola” ( water boiled with burnt cooked rice ). Malagasy cuisine revolves around rice, an emblematic cereal in Madagascar which holds a world record for its consumption.
No wonder it is included in a number of proverbs ( Love is like a small rice plant: transplanted, it grows somewhere else”; “ Do not praise your own merits like the rice boiling in the cooking pot” , …) and comprises several varieties such as the “Rojomena” , endemic, with honey and hazel flavour. The great classics of Malagasy cuisine are “romazava” or “ravitoto” but a few specialities are worth discovering ( “ tsikorakorana” or camaron, “drakaka” or big crab or “amalona”, eel).
