Roulettes ~ The Great Food Trucks of Noumea, New Caledonia

Yes, Noumea even has food trucks. Real ones.

Noumea's Centreville (city centre) is notoriously quiet on Sundays. Somehow we end up staying in Centreville on a Sunday night, when there is also a seriously Catholic religious holiday going on, plus a solid chunk of the city was upcountry at the Bourail Fair. Not a single shop was open. Not a soul around. Even the street urchins and drunks had vanished. Serious post-apocalypse vibes.

Out of hundreds of shops and restaurants the only things open were Maccas, a servo, and (praise the gods) Le Boat du Monde. A few beers watching the sun set, heaven. But what to do for food? We didn't want to spend much, we just wanted to fill the beer hole in our bellies. Well Macca's is across the road...

Between the pub and Maccas, heaven and hell, we find the roulettes, a night-time food truck fest in the carpark across the road from the market.

There's around half a dozen vans when we visit.

The menus vary though follow very similar themes, a mix of Asian, French and Pacific dishes. If you want a crash course in New Caledonian cuisine, visit a food truck.

This ain't just burgers'n'chips, this is real food.

Our number one guilty food truck pleasure is the sandwich poulet a la creme. Take a super fresh French baguette, probably baked only a couple of hours ago, slice it open and fill it with chicken in white wine and creme sauce.

After all the amazing fancy French food we'd eaten all week, we have to admit this low rent beast was the most eye-poppingly yummy dish of the trip. From memory it was about 800F, maybe less, around ten bucks.

More food truck goodies. Some rich roast pork, prawns'n'rice. And fish!

On another roulette raid we go for prawn omelette and some char sui chicken. The red roasted chicken is rich and sweet.

But it was the prawn omelette that blew our minds. We reckon they boiled up some potato with prawns, then mash the potato to get this wonderful seafoody flavour and a cheap filling. It works.

The roulettes are open at night in the carpark across the road from McDonalds where they have that ancient looking little kiddie funfair. Apparently they have fantastic roulettes in Tahiti. We must go there.

This post was brought to you by Nicky, the worst guard dog in Noumea. This scraggly fella was all growly, fierce and tough until the promise of a pat and scratch was made.