And Taiwan introduced the world to Bubble Tea, a sweet milky beverage containing little pearls of tapioca.
Tapioca stands are common, as are those selling corn on the cob, coated in melted butter and sprinkled with salt.
Tapioca balls come with a piquant sauce and pork crackling comes sous-vide.
Nai Mong Hoi Thod (539 Thanon Plaeang Nahm) sells nothing but oyster omelettes, crisp from tapioca flour and long-frying on an ancient, seasoned wok in rendered pork fat.
For one thing, stands of tapioca and sugar cane have been planted around the island lest the "castaways" prove less than successful at foraging from the forest.
Throughout the year, most hotels have Tahitian shows and feasts of fei (cooked banana), uru (breadfruit) and poe (a fruit and tapioca dessert served with coconut milk) at least once a week.
Dishes might include exotic concoctions such as delicate puffed tapioca and jasmine rice with pumpkin seeds and mushroom floss, or South Australian squid in aromatic smoked leek linseed and garlic flower broth.
But some, after many portions, could make an unthinking mantra of the list of ingredients: Wheat Flour, Palm Oil (Tocopherols), Tapioca Starch, Salt, Dehydrated Vegetables (Cabbage, Green Onion, Carrot), Disodium Guanylate, Disodium Inosinate.
Diners lucky enough to get reservations at elBulli before it closed two years ago feasted on 50-course tasting menus featuring frozen cocktails, ham tapioca, lobster and lamb's brain salad and many other challenging creations.
Stop for a bite of a Rio street food favourite, tapioca pancake filled with sweet or savoury fillings, at one of the many food carts lining the water, or rest up with a beer and bratwurst at Bar Lagoa, housed in an Art Deco building dating from 1934.
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