Bulmakau A La Mode

Travellers who like to eat the food of the country generally have a hard time of it in the Pacific Islands where the native diet was generally pretty monotonous before Europeans brought a bit of imagina tion to bear on the subject and the natives themselves learned to open cans.

With this in mind, we can give the Pacific Area Travel Association full marks for trying, if not for geography, when it planned its “Pacific Menu” for 250 guest at an Open Board Meeting in San Francisco at end of October.

Nonetheless that Indonesian main dish will stick in many gullets.

This was the bill of fare: Pacific Shrimp in Half Shell of Papaya ♦ * Javanese Lamb Sate Rice Curry Sauce Chutney Fried Eggplant *♦ Ginger Sherbet Rice Cookies Coffee Tea Indonesian cooking is very well known —mostly because it was pub licised for 300 years by Dutchmen who liked what they found there and adapted some of it to European tastes. But Indonesian food is Asian and has even less reason to be on a Pacific menu than Australian meat pies or T-bone steaks; or New Zealand chops or Toheroa soup; or Fiji-Indian curry and rods.

If PATA had really wanted to be 20th Century authentic Pacific it would have given each of its guests an individual tin of corned beef— called bulmakau in SW Pacific Pidgin-English and pisupo in parts of Polynesia.