Papeete eats well at two ends of the price spectrum and badly in the middle. The cheap end is the roulottes on Place Vai'ete and the food stalls on the upper floor of the Marché — chow mein, grilled fish, steak-frites for 1,500-2,000 XPF. The high end is the French restaurants of the seafront hotels, the Hilton, the Pearl Beach, the InterContinental on the west side, where a proper meal will run 6,000 XPF and up.
The local Tahitian-Chinese fusion is the most interesting middle-ground food on offer — the Chinese arrived as indentured workers on cotton plantations in the 1860s and stayed to dominate the city's commerce. Look for chao men (Tahitian-style chow mein with raw fish), poisson cru (raw tuna marinated in lime and coconut milk), and ma'a tinito (a slow-cooked pork-and-bean stew that fuses both cuisines). Sunday lunch is the big meal of the week — many local families take the morning's catch home from the market and assemble a long midday feast.