EMBERZanzibar's cuisine is a meeting of flavors — the Swahili coast, Indian and Arab influences, plus the spices the island is famous for all over the world. It's no accident it's called the "Spice Island": cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla have grown here for centuries and turn up in almost every dish.
Zanzibar Pizza is probably the island's best-known street snack — not pizza in the Italian sense at all, but a thin dough filled with minced meat, egg and vegetables, fried on a big iron griddle. You'll find it mostly in the evening, at the street markets of Stone Town.
The evening market at Forodhani Gardens, right on the waterfront in Stone Town, is where all these snacks come together — fish skewers, fruit salads, freshly pressed sugarcane juice and, of course, Zanzibar Pizza, served at makeshift tables with an ocean view.
Urojo, known locally as "Zanzibar Mix," is a tangy mango soup with cassava chips, bhajia and a boiled egg on top — a strange combination on paper, but one of the dishes locals order most often.
Coconut is the ingredient that ties together the whole coastal cuisine of the island — it appears in fish curries, in sauces and even in desserts, combined with tamarind, lime or chili for the sweet-sour-spicy balance typical of the region. Fresh fish is everywhere, wherever you are, from grilled kingfish to marinated octopus.
If you want to see exactly where the spices come from, a visit to a spice plantation near the island's main towns shows you cloves, vanilla and cinnamon growing, with a tasting at the end — a good way to understand why Zanzibar was, for centuries, a key point on the spice trade route.