The feast, explained
The lovo: how a Fijian earth oven actually cooks a feast
Hot stones, layered leaves and an hour or two buried underground — how the dinner on this evening is actually cooked, from pit to plate.
See Fiji Culture Village tickets on GetYourGuide ↗The lovo, stage by stage
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Stones | River stones heated in a pit until smoking hot |
| Layer | Banana leaves, then root crops, then wrapped meat and fish, then palusami |
| Seal | More leaves, then buried under soil |
| Lift | Uncovered after a few hours |
| Serve | Straight from the leaves to the table |
An oven with no metal in it
A lovo starts as a pit dug into the ground, filled with river stones and burned until the stones themselves are smoking hot. There's no oven door, no dial and no element — the stones are the entire heat source, and everything that follows depends on how well they've been heated beforehand.
The order of the layers matters
Once the hot stones are covered with a layer of banana or palm leaves, the food goes in by type: root vegetables such as taro (dalo) and cassava go in first, closest to the heat, since they take longest to cook through. Leaf-wrapped chicken, pork and fish go in next, and palusami — taro leaves filled with coconut cream and onion — sits on top, where the heat is gentler.
Buried, not watched
Once more leaves go over the top, the whole pile is buried under soil or sand to seal the heat in completely. From that point there's nothing to open, check or turn — the lovo cooks itself under the ground for a few hours while the rest of the evening's programme runs above it.
Why it tastes different
Food cooked this way picks up a smoky, earthy character that an oven or a barbecue doesn't produce — a mix of the leaf-wrapping, the direct stone heat and the slow, sealed cooking time. It's the reason a lovo dinner reads as a distinct dish rather than just a variation on a roast.
Lifted mid-evening, not at the start
Because the lovo needs a few hours underground, it's typically buried before guests arrive and lifted partway through the programme — during the kava ceremony or the early part of the show, rather than the moment you sit down. That timing is part of why the evening runs the order it does.