4 Best Restaurants in Viti Levu, Fiji

What more appropriate setting for fantastic seafood than a 35-year-old original Blue Lagoon cruise ship? The fresh catch is written up on the blackboard menu at either end of the dining room. More often than not this includes lobster, sea prawns, and fish such as Nuqa, masterfully prepared. There are smoking and no-smoking areas as well as a private dining room in the former captain's quarters with 270-degree views. Some diners come later to hear the guitarist accompanied by a slice of sticky date pudding or chocolate mud cake, but it's worth arriving in time for sunset drinks. The restaurant is engine-less and attached to the dock, so don't worry about missing the boat.

At the end of a jetty extending into a lagoon, a sand floor and thick wooden tables furnish the setting for outstanding seafood. Among the restaurant's six types of fish, all but Coral Trout can be steamed, grilled, baked, panfried, crumbed, or battered and served with a trio of tartar sauce, soy sauce, and garlic butter. The pièce de résistance is a seafood platter for two that includes oysters, mussels, scallops, shots of lobster bisque, baby octopus, calamari, prawn cocktails, parrot fish, mahimahi, tuna, and a whole lobster, all beautifully presented on a wooden board. You can dine under the hand-carved, traditional high ceiling or alfresco and take in the views some couples choose to accompany their wedding vows.

Diners come from around Denarau to this casual restaurant for the legendary seafood buffet Wednesday and Saturday nights. Dubbed Ika Levu (Fijian for "Great Fish"), the buffet features the restaurant's characteristic live cooking stations and artful presentation, only with an extravagant array of Fiji's freshest. Indoor and outdoor tables are well-spaced. Buffet themes on other nights include Indo-Fijian, native-Fijian, BBQ, and Asian-Pacific, and there's always a children's buffet. It's on the ground floor of the resort's main building, and you can walk up from the beach.

After 9 pm, expats and tourists get the karaoke going at this fun seafood joint and steak house. Yet most guests come to hear the imported rib eyes and T-bones sizzle on their way from the kitchen to the beer garden. Prawn dishes and the Bounty Burger are also highly in demand, as is the steak sandwich at lunchtime. "Bula Hour" (noon–2, 5–8) sees prices on the tropical cocktail menu drop 20%. A mural of the restaurant's namesake ship plus stacked wooden barrels at the maître 'd stand and good-natured, buxom servers complete the feel-good atmosphere. It's also open for breakfast.