Madagascar Food Guide: Where to Eat in Antananarivo

In Madagascar, rice is not a side dish: it is the meal. Malagasy people eat more rice per person than almost anyone on earth, often three times a day, and everything else on the plate is laoka, the accompaniment. That accompaniment can be a gingery broth of zebu and greens, pork with pounded cassava leaves, chicken in coconut, or fish grilled on a beach in the southwest. This Madagascar food guide covers the dishes to know, how to read a menu in Malagasy and French, tipping and paying in ariary, and where to eat in Antananarivo, Antsirabe, Fianarantsoa and Ambalavao, Toliara and the southwest, Nosy Be, Toamasina and Antsiranana.

What to eat in Madagascar: 12 dishes to know

Malagasy food is mild, clean-tasting and built on rice, with flavour coming from ginger, garlic, tomato and the chilli paste served on the side. French, Chinese, Indian and Comorian influences show up everywhere. These are the dishes to look out for.

• Vary (everywhere): rice, served in a mound at every meal. For breakfast, many people eat vary sosoa, a soft, soupy rice porridge, often with dried meat.
• Romazava (everywhere, especially the highlands): often called the national dish, a light broth of zebu beef and several kinds of greens (anana), including the tingling leaves of paracress, with ginger, tomato and garlic.
• Ravitoto sy henakisoa (everywhere): young cassava leaves pounded and simmered for hours with fatty pork, sometimes with coconut milk. Rich, dark green and much loved.
• Akoho sy voanio (the coasts): chicken cooked in coconut milk with tomato, ginger and garlic, a classic of the east and north.
• Zebu (everywhere): the humped cattle of Madagascar, on menus as steaks, brochettes (skewers) and stews. Zebu steak with a green peppercorn sauce is a standard dish in tourist restaurants.
• Kitoza (the highlands): strips of zebu or pork, dried or smoked, then grilled or fried, eaten with vary sosoa for breakfast.
• Lasary and sakay (everywhere): lasary is a relish of vegetables, either fresh tomato and onion or pickled like Indian achar, and sakay is the fiery chilli paste set on every table. Use it carefully.
• Mofo gasy and street snacks (everywhere): mofo gasy are slightly sweet rice-flour cakes cooked in a dimpled pan over charcoal, sold at dawn with coffee. Also look for mofo akondro (banana fritters), mofo sakay (chilli fritters) and sambos (samosas).
• Koba (the highlands): a dense sweet log of ground peanuts, banana and rice flour wrapped in banana leaves and boiled for hours, sold in slices at roadsides.
• Mi sao and soupe chinoise (everywhere): fried noodles and noodle soup, brought by the Chinese community and now eaten all over the island, along with nems (spring rolls).
• Seafood (the coasts): prawns (crevettes), lobster (langouste), crab, octopus and fish, often cooked in coconut milk or grilled, cheap and excellent in Toliara, Nosy Be and Antsiranana.
• Ranovola and rhum arrangé (everywhere): ranovola is water boiled in the rice pot with the toasted crust at the bottom, a smoky drink served with meals. Rhum arrangé is local rum infused with vanilla, ginger, lychee or other fruits.

How to read a Malagasy menu

Madagascar has two official languages, Malagasy and French, and menus use both. Tourist restaurants and hotels write their menus in French, sometimes with English. Small local eateries, called hotely, often chalk up the day's dishes in Malagasy, and each dish comes with a plate of rice included. These are the words that matter.

On French menus, look for plat du jour (dish of the day), menu (a set meal of two or three courses), au coco (in coconut sauce), sauce au poivre vert (green peppercorn sauce) and sur commande (must be ordered in advance).

Tipping, tax and paying the bill in Madagascar

Tipping (pourboire) is not expected in local hotely, but it is common in tourist restaurants and hotels, where around 5 to 10 percent for good service is appreciated. Guides, drivers and porters are usually tipped at the end of a trip, and those tips matter a great deal to them. Prices in restaurants generally include VAT (TVA), and a service charge is rarely added. Our guide to tax and service charges on menus explains how service and tax lines work around the world.

The currency is the ariary (MGA), written Ar on menus. Madagascar is a cash economy: cards are accepted at larger hotels, some restaurants in Antananarivo and Nosy Be and a few tour operators, often with a surcharge, but almost everywhere else is cash only. ATMs in the main towns accept foreign cards, mainly Visa, and euros are easy to exchange. Carry small notes, because change for large ones can be hard to find in rural areas. When a card machine offers to charge you in your home currency, decline and pay in ariary: our guide to paying in local currency explains why.

Malagasy days start early. Breakfast is at dawn, lunch is from about 12pm to 2pm, and dinner from around 7pm, with many restaurants outside the big towns closing by 9pm. In rural areas, roadside hotely serve rice and laoka all day until they run out.

Where to eat in Madagascar, town by town

Madagascar is huge and its roads are slow, so most visitors follow one route, often the RN7 south from Antananarivo to Toliara, or fly to Nosy Be or the north. Jump to a destination:

• Antananarivo
• Antsirabe
• Fianarantsoa and Ambalavao
• Toliara and the southwest
• Nosy Be
• Toamasina
• Antsiranana

Where to eat in Antananarivo

Antananarivo, the capital, known to everyone as Tana, spreads across hills and rice paddies in the central highlands, and it has the best choice of restaurants in Madagascar. The downtown district around Analakely and the Avenue de l'Indépendance has hotely serving romazava, ravitoto and zebu stews with rice for very little, plus stalls selling mofo gasy, sambos and koba. The Analakely market, spilling up stairways and side streets, and the larger Andravoahangy market are the places to see Tana's produce, spices, vanilla and street food.

For sit-down meals, the old quarter of Isoraka and the Haute-Ville (upper town), on the ridge below the royal palace, have French, Malagasy and fusion restaurants in old brick houses, many with views over the city. Antananarivo is the place to try Malagasy dishes cooked with care, such as zebu with local wild pepper, duck, and foie gras, which is produced in the highlands. Tana's traffic is notoriously slow, so allow plenty of time to reach a dinner booking, and take a taxi at night.

Where to eat in Antsirabe

Antsirabe, a few hours south of Tana on the RN7, is a highland spa town founded by Norwegian missionaries, with wide avenues, colonial buildings and brightly painted pousse-pousse rickshaws. It is cooler than the coast, and the surrounding farmland supplies much of the country's dairy, fruit and vegetables. The town is also home to Madagascar's main brewery, so a cold local lager tastes particularly fresh here.

Eating in Antsirabe is simple and good value: hotely around the centre and the market serve rice with zebu, pork and greens, and roadside stalls sell mofo gasy, grilled corn and fresh yoghurt. The big Saturday market is the busiest food day in Antsirabe, with produce from the whole region. Hotels on the main avenue serve French and Malagasy set menus, and many travellers on the RN7 stop overnight here.

Where to eat in Fianarantsoa and Ambalavao

Fianarantsoa, in the southern highlands, is the heartland of the Betsileo people and their spectacular terraced rice paddies. The restored old upper town has narrow cobbled streets and churches above the modern city. The region around Fianarantsoa and Ambalavao is Madagascar's small wine country, with vineyards producing red, white and grey wines, and the tea estates at Sahambavy, east of the city, can be visited. Hotels and restaurants in Fianarantsoa serve French and Malagasy menus, and the local hotely serve rice with laoka at every corner.

An hour south, Ambalavao holds the largest zebu market in Madagascar, where herders walk cattle in from across the south on market days, usually Wednesday and Thursday. It is a working market, not a show, and the surrounding stalls sell grilled zebu brochettes, rice and coffee to traders. Ambalavao is a common lunch stop on the RN7, and its small restaurants serve simple, good zebu dishes.

Where to eat in Toliara and the southwest

Toliara (Tuléar in French) is the hot, dry end of the RN7, and its food turns to the sea. The Vezo people of the southwest coast are fishermen, sailing outrigger pirogues over the reef, and the catch of octopus, crab, lobster, prawns and fish is sold in Toliara's markets and cooked in its restaurants, grilled or in coconut sauce. Inland the land is semi-desert, and cassava, maize and sweet potato replace rice in many meals, which is unusual for Madagascar.

North of Toliara, the beach resort of Ifaty has hotels and simple restaurants serving grilled fish and seafood, and to the south, Anakao is reached by boat and has guesthouses serving the day's catch. Many meals in the southwest are part of a full-board stay, so ask about the menu when you book. Toliara's market is the place to buy fruit, peanuts and street snacks before a long drive.

Where to eat on Nosy Be

Nosy Be, the island off the northwest coast, is Madagascar's main beach destination, and its food scene is the most international in the country. The island is known as the "perfume island" for its ylang-ylang plantations, and the mainland opposite, the Sambirano valley, grows cocoa, coffee and spices. The market in Hell-Ville (Andoany), the main town, sells vanilla, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, fruit and fish, and simple restaurants nearby serve rice with chicken in coconut, fish curry and zebu.

The beach area of Ambatoloaka has the island's busiest strip of restaurants and bars, serving seafood, pizza and pasta (many visitors to Nosy Be are Italian), grilled lobster and fish in coconut sauce. Resorts on the quieter beaches are often full board. Boat trips to the islands of Nosy Komba and Nosy Tanikely usually include a grilled fish lunch on the beach. Prices on Nosy Be are higher than on the mainland, but seafood is still good value.

Where to eat in Toamasina

Toamasina (Tamatave in French) is Madagascar's main port on the east coast, a hot, humid city with a large Chinese and Comorian community and a long seafront. The east coast is the land of cloves, coconuts and lychees: from around November to January, Toamasina is piled high with lychees, and the region exports them by the shipload. Coconut milk flavours many local dishes, from chicken and fish to rice and beans.

The Bazary Be, the big market in the centre, is the place to see the produce of the east coast, from lychees and bananas to spices, dried fish and street food. Toamasina has Chinese restaurants, seafood places along the seafront boulevard and hotely all over the centre. It is the starting point for the canal journey south and for trips to the island of Sainte-Marie, where meals are mostly at beach lodges.

Where to eat in Antsiranana

Antsiranana, still widely called Diego Suarez, sits on one of the world's largest natural bays at the northern tip of the island. It was a French naval base for decades, and its colonial centre has wide streets, faded buildings and a laid-back café culture. Seafood is the reason to eat here: lobster, crab, prawns, octopus and fish, cooked in coconut, grilled or in French-style sauces at restaurants along the main street and around the old town.

Half an hour away, the beach village of Ramena has simple restaurants serving grilled fish and lobster on the sand, and the green slopes of the Montagne d'Ambre national park, inland, have lodges serving Malagasy and French menus. The north is also one of the main areas for cocoa, vanilla and spices, and markets in Antsiranana sell them at fair prices.

Vegetarian, vegan and allergy tips

Madagascar is manageable for vegetarians who are careful. Rice with beans (tsaramaso), greens, vegetable lasary and fritters is easy to find, and tourist restaurants usually have a vegetarian dish. The problem is hidden meat and fish: greens are often cooked with pork or tiny dried shrimp (patsa), broths are made with zebu, and ravitoto is traditionally made with pork. Say végétarien in French, or tsy mihinana hena aho ("I do not eat meat") in Malagasy, and ask about fish and shrimp separately.

Peanuts are common in koba, sauces and snacks, and coconut milk is in many coastal dishes. Seafood allergies need care in the coastal towns, where shellfish appear in sauces and soups. Our guide to eating abroad with food allergies explains how to make an allergy clear when you do not speak the language, and having it written in French is useful anywhere in Madagascar.

Useful Malagasy and French phrases for ordering

Manao ahoana "Hello" in Malagasy, the standard greeting

Azafady "Please" or "excuse me", useful for getting attention politely

Une table pour deux, s'il vous plaît "A table for two, please" in French

Ohatrinona? "How much is it?" in Malagasy

Sans piment, s'il vous plaît "Without chilli, please" in French

Tsy mihinana hena aho "I do not eat meat" in Malagasy

Matsiro be! "Very tasty!" in Malagasy

Misaotra / L'addition, s'il vous plaît "Thank you" in Malagasy / "The bill, please" in French

How swap.menu helps you eat in Madagascar

A hotely board in Antananarivo or a French menu in Antsiranana can be equally baffling: is ravitoto meat or vegetable, what is laoka, and what comes in a romazava? Photograph the menu with swap.menu and every dish appears in your language with the Malagasy or French name beside it and a short explanation, so you know before you order that henakisoa is pork and sakay is the chilli paste. Every price is converted from ariary to your home currency.

Tap the dishes you want, add a note such as "no pork" or "no dried shrimp", typed or spoken, and swap.menu translates your order into French or Malagasy. Show the server your phone, or let them scan the QR code and read your order on their own screen. Try it on a sample menu with the free demo, or see travel pass prices.

Madagascar food FAQ