Thoddoo Sweet · Arrowroot Treat
Tharafana
🍮
Photo coming soon
It's made from hitthalafuh, arrowroot flour grown and processed right on the island — a starch most Maldivians only ever meet as a thickener, not as the base ingredient of a whole dessert.
Arrowroot flour, known locally as hitthalafuh, is mixed with sugar and jasmine water, dried, then deep-fried and coated in dhiyaa hakuru (coconut syrup) into tharafana, a treat that showcases one of Thoddoo's lesser-known farm crops. It's sold alongside the island's other tea-time sweets as a specialty distinct to Ari Atoll.
Why it's made this way: Thoddoo's identity as the Maldives' farming island extends beyond its famous watermelons, and tharafana shows how even a starch crop most people know only as a thickening agent became the base of its own dessert.
Roughly what's in it
190kcal
1gprotein
38gcarbs
4gfat
Estimated per typical street-vendor portion — not lab-tested.
More from Maldives
Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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