Freddie’s Roulotte

After the island circumnavigation on the cruiser bike and getting a
look at the Moorea snack and café offerings, which a hungry and frugal
bike rider can be especially sensitive to, Freddie's Roulotte, a type
of trailer "restaurant/café", which was already looking very good and
the food tasting even better, went to the top of the must-visit list.
On my last lunch break visit there I was fortunate to just beat the
crowd, the place was packed. Freddie and Ina (she's from the Cook
Islands, named after a mythological princess who opened the first
coconut on the hump of a shark's back)

were in high gear making long
baguette sandwiches, tunafish burgers, salads, omelet sandwiches,
fries, and a lot more I don't know about. Out side both fold up chuck
wagon sides of his trailer was a mixture of nicely dressed French
beach tourists and local Tahitians and French, this group looking very
island (minimal worn-out clothing, long hair, tattoos).

This stretch of the island (the northwest shore across from the two
big motus) has the best combination of little stores; places to eat,
grocery store, bookstore, mini-hardware store, internet wi-fi, and
leaning-over Polynesian palm tree beaches with blue lagoon in all of
Moorea. Claude and Barbara bounced around quite a bit, on the planet
and in the Society Islands, before finding this petit treasure. We
all like the small diverse community feeling and the pedestrian size
of the village and nearby leisure facilities. Freddie set-up his
roulotte here only four years ago, after buying it out of his lottery
winnings, before that he was an island school bus driver. Now his
corner of the "shopping center" has become an institution.

Freddie has been on the island a long time, he and his assistant Ina
work as smoothly as the 12-speed transmition of an Italian race care.
One funny routine I noticed early is that Ina calls out all of the
orders to Freddie, no matter what he is doing, and he is usually doing
about five things at once, for him to do an in-head calculation and
give her the total bill for the customers waiting at the side door to
pay. No one disputes the numbers, it is all cash, and as in all of
these islands, there is no tax.

Good music blasts in the background, everyone is in the grove.
Freddie is cutting huge slabs of fresh tuna for the tuna burgers,
dealing with deliverymen at their truck windows, prepping a large
order of sandwiches, and keeping one eye on the fries. Claude of
course always comes by and has a cha cha conversation with him gives
him a small break; he also is a regular customer. Freddie is very
generous in general with all of his portions and prices, you can't
beat his place on this island, he is also generous with Claude in
loaning him his cartoon style mini-mok open cab pick-up, the perfect
island car. Claude is generous back to him and leaves it with a full
tank of gas. With this remodel project this little car has been of
great help.

Freddie actually got off of the island a couple of months ago and made
a trip to San Francisco for two weeks, wow, that is a big change. He
is not a physically big person, really looks like a Parisian taxi
driver or flower market vendor. He would fit well into a leather
pilot's jacket and has a 50's combed back hairstyle. It will be
interesting to see how this roulotte fairs as this island handles the
evolving economic and political issues, which do not escape any part
of our planet.

(Photos of all of this late August when I'm back in PT)