By Sera Tikotikovatu-Sefeti
During the hottest months in Fiji, sometimes all you want to eat is something cool and sweet. Tasty Island Treats Fiji can satisfy that craving and help you revisit the simple childhood joy of enjoying an iced popsicle.
Tasty Island Treats Fiji was founded by Nakita Irvin, who was inspired by her husband’s love for ice cream.
“I was working at GIZ [German development agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit] for almost four years in the development sector, and I didn’t like the corporate life; I wanted to do my own thing and be my own boss.”
Irvin is a big foodie and spent some time trying to decide what gastronomic route to take. Initially she considered opening a restaurant but wanted to do something “completely different.”
“My husband is obsessed with ice cream, and before he married me, he was working in an ice cream shop in LA… so he knew the process of how to make ice cream. And I thought yes, we need a proper ice cream shop in Fiji. We started experimenting; he was helping me at first with a dairy-dairy based ice cream, and then we quickly realised that the dairy supply is really inconsistent in Fiji.”
This realisation prompted Irvin to reconsider her approach. Sourcing local ingredients was important, as was a product that avoided artificial ingredients.
“I quickly experimented with fresh coconuts; we would scrape fresh coconuts and used to have two lines of popsicles, one coconut cream-based and the other coconut water-based.”
Tasty Island Treats Fiji has been operating for five years and its flavour options are wide; Irvin has introduced more than 130 flavours over that time depending on the seasonal availability of ingredients.
There are five core flavours available all year around: toasted coconut, chocolate brownie, chocolate, watermelon cream, and pineapple lemonade, alongside two specialty flavours, masala chai and golden milk.
Seasonal variations include mango creme, mint, passionfruit, banana, pineapple, soursop, kumquat, mandarin and guava lemonade, and their many combinations.
Irvin is always experimenting, and other elements to make it into the popsicles include basil, starfruit, local berries (lobi lobi), dragonfruit and iced tea.
The pops are available at markets from the very cute Tasty Island Treats Fiji popsicle bike, at supermarkets such as Kundan Singh, and selected resorts, where they have been incorporated into extra special cocktails. Look out for their pop-ups on their Facebook page as well.
This article first appeared in Fiji Traveller, April-June 2023.
