With it being our first day in Palau we hit the ground running by chartering a boat and heading out to drink and get our Boaty McBoatface on. When in Rome after all.
But, as sure as night follows day, night followed day and it was time for dinner. I do like me a bit of weird grub, so when I’d heard the local delicacy was fruit bat cooked in various ways, there was only ever one thing (maybe 2) on my menu.
We invited our local guide and headed off to Carp Restaurant. Carp Restaurant is probably the most famous restaurant in the country for eating authentic Palau food and cuisine. Apparently bat soup in a real Palau food delicacy.
I’ll start off with a warning if you do go to Carp Restaurant, the dishes are fucking huge, but more on that later.
We started with a mixed sashimi for $20, which again was huge. In the medley were tuna (always good in the Pacific), a white fish (carp maybe), and raw clam. The clam was out of this world, and again (if size matters) it was too much for two people. Surprisingly, particularly as a former colony of the ever benevolent Japanese, the wasabi was very sub-par.
But, hey you’re not here for sashimi, you wanna know about fruit bat soup right? The bat comes whole in the soup, that’s right a whole bat. The meat is sweet, gamey, and almost fish like, but the skin is different shall we say.
Bat skin comes with the fur still on it, generally speaking food and fur are not the same things in my book. I then tried to eat the head (I at least put it in my mouth), but balked at crunching the skull to eat bat brains. I was glad I’d tried the most famous Palau food, but I won’t be eating bat again.
We finished the evening with cock….well rooster beer, but if you’re going to have a rooster as your logo for the national beer, expect jokes…
Day 1 in Koror! Palau food dealt with and only 31 days until I get home.
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