Eating on Easter Island is expensive. Most restaurant meals average around $30 for a main course and a beer. The price of getting ingredients to the most remote island in the world is costly, therefore using the native ingredients and products from the island (like the new Easter Island beer, Mahina), which deforestation has limited greatly unfortunately, is advised to keep your budget on target.This means sticking to the island’s two most common fish: Tuna and Kana Kana.The quality of these two fish – served in ceviches, burgers, grilled, with Tahitian vanilla sauce, as kebabs on an Anakena Beach grill, or as sushi and sashimi – pulled right from the Pacific is superb anywhere and anyhow you try it. I have been to Easter island on two occasions now, both while updating Frommer’s Chile & Easter Island, and one of my favorite ways to sample the tuna is an in empanada from a collection of food carts on Policarpo Toro street next to the futbol pitch. The three carts/trailers under a series of connected tarps serve fresh ceviche, sandwiches, tuna chorrillianas, completos, hamburgers, and lomo a la pobre, but it’s the empanadas I order every time. They’re served with a spicy lo pebre sauce with onions and come out right from the fryer steaming hot. The best food stall, though the most expensive, is Ahi-Ahi.

Nicholas Gill (470 Posts)

Writer and photographer Nicholas Gill is the editor/publisher of New World Review. He lives in Lima, Peru and Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CondeNast Traveler, National Geographic Traveler, Afar, and Penthouse. Visit his personal website (nicholas-gill.com) for more information.