In the Polynesian world, meals are not separated into starter, main course and dessert: everything cooks together in the umu, the earth oven dug into the ground and heated with volcanic stones. Daily food (kai) revolves around fish, taro and kumara; special occasions (hākari, the feast) pile leaf baskets into the same smoking oven. Ceremonial drinks and tapu (sacred, sometimes forbidden) foods frame the important moments, and canoe provisions are prepared to last the crossing.

The queen technique of the Pacific: a pit lined with fire-reddened stones, baskets of food placed on top, covered with damp leaves and earth to steam-cook for hours. For Māui, this fire is no small matter: it is he who stole it from the burning fingernails of the ancestress Mahuika to give it to humans. Every lit umu re-enacts this founding theft.