KU Kurunmaa Finolhu Retreat Fourteen villas on a small island in Faafu Atoll

What one restaurant on a small island actually means

Fourteen villas do not support four kitchens. What we do instead, and why half board is usually the right answer.

A resort with fourteen villas cannot run four restaurants and pretend it is a big island, and trying would give you four mediocre kitchens instead of one good one.

So there is one. Breakfast is a buffet with eggs cooked to order. Lunch is a short menu of about six things. Dinner is a set menu with a choice of two mains, and one of them is always a reef fish landed that morning by one of the boats from the inhabited island across the channel.

The practical consequence is that half board is usually the right choice. On bed and breakfast you will eat dinner here anyway, because there is nowhere else, and you will pay more for it than the half board rate. We would rather say that plainly than let you work it out from the bill.

Full board suits people who are staying a week and not diving. If you are on the boat at half past eight every morning you will be eating lunch at sea, and a packed lunch goes out with you at no charge on either board basis.

Allergies are worth mentioning at the time you book. There is one kitchen and it orders once a week from the supply boat, so a week of notice is the difference between planning around something and apologising for it.

No pork is served anywhere on the island.