Food in Mauritius: What to Eat (2026 Guide)

I grew up eating Creole food. Not Mauritian Creole. I’m from the Seychelles, a different archipelago a thousand kilometres or so to the north. But it’s the same Indian Ocean culinary family tree. When I finally made it to Mauritius, the food was one of the things I was most excited to explore. What I found is that Mauritius has taken that shared Creole base, layered on a much stronger Indian and Chinese influence, and produced something that stands entirely on its own. There are dishes here I’d never seen growing up, and I loved most of them.

This is a guide to what you should actually eat when you visit Mauritius. Where I know something first-hand, I’ll tell you. Where my brother (who lived in Mauritius for three years) pointed us at something, I’ll say so. And where something is just really good and widely available, I’ll say that too.

Quick Take

If you’re short on time, here’s what matters:

• Dholl puri is the unofficial national dish. Get it from a street stall, not a hotel. Yellow split pea pancakes with bean curry inside, and it’s what most Mauritians eat for lunch.
• Mauritian curry is not Indian curry. No coconut milk, often thyme and other European herbs, and the heat is moderate rather than fiery. It’ll be one of the first things you’re offered.
• Vindaye is the one people forget to recommend. Fish or chicken in mustard and vinegar, tangy rather than spicy. Nothing else on the island tastes like it.
• Alouda is the drink to seek out. Cold milk, basil seeds, agar jelly, vanilla. Pillay’s stall in the Port Louis central market does the best version we had.
• Book a Port Louis street food tour if you’ve only got one food outing in you. Central market in the morning, dholl puri vendor for lunch, boulettes in Chinatown, done.

A bit of context before we get into the dishes. About two thirds of Mauritians are of Indian descent, mostly descended from indentured labourers who arrived in the 19th century after the abolition of slavery. You can learn the full history at the UNESCO-listed Aapravasi Ghat in Port Louis, which is where most of them first set foot on the island.

There’s also a Sino-Mauritian community (about three percent of the population), a Creole community descended from African and Malagasy slaves, and a Franco-Mauritian community that’s the reason you can order a perfectly decent baguette with your curry. All of that shows up on the plate.

We spent a lot of time seeking out as many traditional Mauritian dishes as possible, chatting with locals about their favourites, and asking restaurant staff where they would go for a given dish. Let’s start with the food. Drinks and restaurant recommendations are further down.

Traditional Food in Mauritius

Below is the food I’d actually prioritise. Some of these are whole dishes, some are ingredients that turn up inside other things, and a few are more snack than meal. Where a dish has a specific local name that’s worth knowing, I’ve included it.

Grilled Fish

When you visit an island nation in the Indian Ocean, grilled fish should be high on your list. It’s one of the best ways to get the actual flavour of the fish rather than a sauce it’s swimming in. A properly grilled fish needs nothing more than a squeeze of lime and maybe some chilli on the side.

You’ll find it on almost every menu. Smaller fish come whole; larger fish come as loins or fillets. If you’re not a fan of picking bones out, go for the loin. Some of the best grilled fish I’ve ever had was at the Barachois, the floating restaurant at the Constance Prince Maurice hotel where we stayed for four nights. The loin of fish I had there was one of the most memorable dishes of the trip.

Octopus Salad (Salade Ourite)

You won’t be short of seafood options in Mauritius. Beyond the grilled fish, you’ll find fish smoked, fried, in curries, and (if you’re at the right kind of restaurant) raw. Prawns, octopus, crayfish, and smoked marlin all turn up regularly.

Octopus salad is worth calling out specifically. It’s served cold, the octopus cooked down until it’s tender rather than rubbery, and dressed with onion, tomato, and some combination of chilli and lime. It’s a brilliant lunch in the heat.

Mauritian Curry (Cari)

If you’re thinking this will be much the same as Indian curry, it isn’t. Mauritian curries usually skip coconut milk (unlike their South Indian cousins), often use thyme and other European herbs, and use a wider range of meat and seafood including octopus, duck, and venison. The result is something lighter and less creamy than most Indian curries you might have eaten.

The most common style is a Mauritian masala, built on cumin, coriander, fennel, fenugreek, cardamom, cinnamon, turmeric, and curry leaves. It comes out a rich yellow-gold rather than the deep brown or red you might associate with curry. If you just order “curry” in Mauritius, this is likely what you’ll get.

The venison (cerf) is interesting if you see it on a menu. Mauritius actually has a population of deer, introduced by Dutch settlers in the 17th century, which proceeded to escape and go feral. Venison curry is very much a thing here, usually served on estates or at domaine-style restaurants.

Order any curry and expect it to come with a pile of side dishes: lentils, rice, dholl puri or farata (more on both shortly), and often a small bowl of pickled vegetables. The idea is you build your plate from the components.

Salted Fish (Poisson Salé)

I’ll admit I was disproportionately excited to find salted fish on a Mauritian menu. It’s one of my favourite Seychellois dishes but it’s getting harder to find there. A lot of Seychellois cooks I know say it’s a dish their grandparents made and their grandchildren won’t. In Mauritius, it’s very much still alive, and I ate it in more forms than I thought possible: inside a rougaille, flaked on pizza, as a street food filling, and at the Seabell restaurant where the chef basically served a family feast built around it.

Poisson salé is not a flavour for everyone. It’s very fishy and very salty, and if you’ve never had a salted anchovy or an Italian baccalà you might not love it on first try. But if you do, it’s one of the most distinctive things you can eat in Mauritius, and it’s cheap. Try it in a rougaille at a home-style restaurant first. The tomato sauce softens the edges.

Rougaille

Rougaille is a cornerstone of Mauritian Creole cooking. It’s a sauce at heart (tomato, onion, garlic, ginger, thyme, curry leaves, chilli), and it’s a vehicle for whatever protein is going. Sausage rougaille, fish rougaille, salted fish rougaille, baked egg rougaille. We ate it in every form we could find, and it’s one of those comfort dishes that always hits.

You’ll find it everywhere: restaurants, home kitchens, street food stalls where it’s often wrapped inside a farata. A sausage rougaille and a dholl puri is, in my view, one of the greatest cheap lunches available anywhere in Mauritius.

Vindaye

Vindaye is a specific type of curry with Indian roots (it’s a descendant of vindaloo) but the Mauritian version has diverged significantly. The dominant flavours are mustard and vinegar, with turmeric in the background. That vinegar gives it a pickled edge that most Mauritian dishes don’t have, and it’s the most distinctive thing I ate on the island.

Usually made with fish (often tuna or kingfish), sometimes chicken. If you see “Mauritian mustard fish” on an English menu, that’s vindaye. It’s not subtle. The first mouthful can be a shock if you’re expecting a standard curry. But it’s worth it. This is one of those dishes that I’d happily order again tomorrow, and it’s also one I’ve never seen outside Mauritius.

Biryani

Biryani in Mauritius is a version of the Indian classic, tweaked for local palates. The spice mix is similar (cardamom, cloves, cumin, cinnamon, saffron or turmeric, coriander, ginger, garlic) but the Mauritian take almost always includes potatoes layered in with the rice, which isn’t standard in most Indian biryanis. It’s cooked in a big copper pot called a deg and served at weddings, religious festivals, and pretty much any gathering big enough to justify making one.

If you want to try it, you don’t need to wait for a wedding. Most towns have a biryani vendor, and the markets in Port Louis, Flacq and Vacoas all have stalls that specialise. A plate of biryani from a street vendor with some pickle on the side is about as good as lunch gets.

Dholl Puri

If there’s one dish I’d tell you not to leave Mauritius without trying, it’s dholl puri. It’s widely considered the unofficial national dish, and it’s what Mauritians themselves eat on the regular for a quick, filling, cheap meal.

The base is a thin pancake made from ground yellow split peas, turmeric, and cumin, griddled on a tawa (a flat iron pan). You get it stuffed with something, usually butterbean curry (cari gros pois) or sausage rougaille, and eaten like a wrap. Street food vendors turn them out at speed, and they cost next to nothing.

In sit-down restaurants you’ll often get a small stack of unfilled dholl puri served alongside your curry, to either tear pieces off and scoop with, or wrap around the food. Either way, they are delicious. We probably ate a dozen during our trip and would have eaten more if we’d stayed longer.

Farata

Farata (also called paratha or roti, depending who you ask) is a close cousin of the dholl puri but made with wheat flour rather than ground split peas, which makes it a proper flatbread rather than a stuffed pancake. Water, flour, a bit of oil, briefly fried on a hot pan. That’s it.

You’ll get farata alongside curries in sit-down places, as a street food wrap filled with rougaille or curry, and at pretty much any Mauritian market. In Port Louis at lunchtime we watched entire office blocks queue up at street stalls to get them. That’s about the clearest endorsement you can ask for.

Sept Cari (Seven Curries)

Sept Cari literally means “seven curries” and it’s a ceremonial vegetarian meal built around a selection of (usually seven, sometimes more) vegetable curries served on a banana leaf with a small fried flatbread called ti puri. The traditional seven include butterbean, spinach, rougaille, pumpkin, chouchou (chayote), and banana curry, with jackfruit or gato piment curry sometimes swapped in.

It’s eaten at Hindu weddings and religious events, but a lot of restaurants serve it too, and if you’re vegetarian it’s one of the best ways to try the full range of Mauritian vegetable cookery in one sitting. Eat it with your hands off the banana leaf for the full experience.

Fried Rice (Riz Frite)

Now for the Chinese side of Mauritian food. The Sino-Mauritian community is small (three percent or so) but its influence on what people actually eat day-to-day is massive. Port Louis has a proper Chinatown, and most towns have a Sino-Mauritian restaurant or two.

Fried rice (riz frite) is a staple. Chopped vegetables, egg, soy sauce, fish sauce, plus a choice of meat or seafood, all tossed together in a wok. It’s a fairly standard Cantonese-style fried rice, but there’s usually a bottle of garlic water on the table (slices of garlic in water with a bit of vinegar and salt) that you drizzle over the rice. It transforms the dish. Your breath afterwards is regrettable but the flavour is worth it.

Portions are enormous. One plate will easily feed two people, which is great news for your holiday budget.

Fried Noodles (Mine Frite)

If fried rice is the Cantonese-influenced Mauritian staple, fried noodles are its slightly unhinged sibling. The Mauritian version uses fresh egg noodles, soy sauce, white pepper, a bit of fish sauce, and almost always garlic chives and mung bean sprouts instead of the spring onions you’d find in Chinese versions elsewhere. Those two tweaks are what make it taste specifically Mauritian rather than generically Cantonese.

You’ll find it in every Sino-Mauritian restaurant and at most street food stalls in Chinatown. Served with the same garlic water as the fried rice, plus a small bowl of chilli paste.

Bol Renversé

Bol Renversé (literally “upside-down bowl”) is a classic Sino-Mauritian dish and the most theatrical thing I ate on the island. It’s a stir fry of chicken, vegetables, and Chinese sauces layered into a bowl with rice underneath and a fried egg on top, then flipped upside-down onto a plate just before serving. The waiter brings the bowl to the table face-down, lifts it off, and reveals the dish with the yolk still trickling down the dome.

Sometimes called “magic bowl” for obvious reasons. It’s a one-dish meal and a great one. Pick any Mauritian-Chinese restaurant and it’ll be on the menu.

Boulettes

Boulettes are the Mauritian answer to dim sum. Steamed dumplings filled with anything from chouchou (chayote squash) to pork, chicken, prawns, or fish. You’ll see variants like niouk yen (chouchou-stuffed), sao mai (pork or vegetarian), and wonton-style parcels, usually served in a clear broth or with dipping sauce.

Best eaten from street food stalls in Chinatown, Port Louis. Cheap, warming, and an easy way to try a few different fillings in one sitting.

Gato Piments

If you want a spicy snack, gato piments are your move. They’re deep-fried balls of chickpea flour mixed with chopped red and green chillies, similar in texture to a falafel but with a much more aggressive heat level. They come out of the fryer crispy on the outside, soft inside, and best eaten hot from the stall where they’re made.

Easy to find at street food stalls across the country. A popular pre-meal snack, and if you can’t take the heat, just try one before committing.

Palm Heart Salad (Salade Millionaire)

Palm heart salad, sometimes called “millionaire’s salad”, is made from the heart of a coconut palm. The name comes from the fact that harvesting the heart kills the tree, so you’re effectively killing a source of income (a palm tree can take years to mature) for a single salad. Hence: a rich person’s dish.

It tastes nothing like coconut. The texture is crunchy and the flavour is fresh and slightly nutty. Usually served with smoked marlin on top, or just with a simple vinaigrette. Most hotels and higher-end restaurants have it on the menu, and it’s one of the better starters you’ll find.

Achard (Pickled Vegetables)

When you order a curry, there’s a good chance a small bowl of achard will land on the table as a side. It’s a cold pickled vegetable dish (usually shredded cabbage, carrot, and chouchou) dressed with vinegar, mustard seeds, turmeric, and a variable amount of chilli. Sometimes it’s mild; sometimes the chilli is really fierce. Try a small spoonful before committing to a big bite.

Mazavaroo

A condiment more than a dish, but worth knowing. Mazavaroo is a Mauritian chilli paste (red chillies, ginger, garlic, oil, salt) served alongside pretty much any Mauritian meal as a heat-up option. If you like your food spicy, ask for it. If you don’t, admire it from a distance. Often served in a small shared bowl at the table.

Traditional Desserts in Mauritius

Mauritians have a sweet tooth. If you do too, you’re in luck.

Napolitaine

Not to be confused with Neapolitan ice cream (though the confusion is inevitable). A napolitaine is two shortbread biscuits stuck together with jam and covered in pink icing. They turn up in every patisserie, supermarket, and tabagie on the island. Impossibly sweet, impossibly pink, and impossible not to buy another one after you’ve finished the first.

Gato Coco

Small ball-shaped treats made from grated coconut, milk, and sugar. Sweet, dense, and often dyed bright colours that would make a 1980s children’s TV presenter proud. Sold at most markets and tabagies.

Corn Pudding (Poudine Maïs)

A cake-like pudding made with cornmeal (maize flour) instead of wheat flour, mixed with sugar, milk, and vanilla, and sometimes studded with raisins or topped with grated coconut. Not as sweet as most Mauritian desserts, which is arguably a feature rather than a bug.

Flan

The Mauritian version of crème caramel: an egg-custard dessert with a caramel sauce. Coconut flan is the most interesting variant, with grated coconut through the custard. You’ll find it on almost every dessert menu.

Vermicelli Dessert

Not the savoury noodle dish. This is vermicelli noodles cooked in milk with raisins, almonds, sugar, and cardamom, and served cool. The texture is closer to rice pudding than anything Italian. It’s common at Mauritian-Indian weddings and festivals, and decent restaurants will often have it on the menu.

Banana Fritters (Gateau Banane)

Mashed banana, flour, and sugar, mixed into a batter and deep-fried into golden balls. Served plain, or with ice cream, or drizzled with syrup. A great late-night snack after a long day of eating your way around the island.

Fresh Local Fruit

Mauritius grows excellent tropical fruit. When we visited, mango was just coming into season (I may have eaten more mango in that ten days than in the entire preceding year), and the litchi trees were heavy with fruit. Pineapple, banana, coconut, papaya, and longan (similar to litchi but yellow) are all widely available, and most hotels will have a fruit platter with your breakfast that’s worth the room rate on its own.

A quick note for photographers: tropical fruit photographs beautifully in the flat light of a hotel terrace breakfast. Worth bringing your camera down to breakfast for a few days if you’re into that kind of thing.

Drinks in Mauritius

Now for what to wash all of this down with.

Alouda

Alouda is a cold milk-based drink flavoured with vanilla and filled with basil seeds and agar jelly. It’s related to the Indian drink falooda, and it’s one of the most refreshing things you can have in Mauritian heat. Sometimes served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

The best place to get it is the Port Louis central market, where several stalls specialise in it. Pillay’s is the one most often mentioned by locals, and it’s the version I had. Worth the trip.

Rum

Sugarcane has been Mauritius’s main crop for centuries, and where there’s sugarcane, there’s rum. The island has several distilleries that offer tours and tastings, and we visited a few. Rhumerie de Chamarel is probably the best-known, and one we’d recommend for the tour-and-tasting experience.

If you’re staying at a beach resort and don’t fancy driving, you can do a full-day south-west tour like this one, which usually includes a distillery stop plus a few other attractions. The distilleries are very generous with tasting pours, so having someone else do the driving is a good call.

Ti’ Punch

The island’s go-to rum cocktail. Neat white rum, a spoon of sugar, a splash of lime or lemon juice. That’s it. It’s strong, and it doesn’t hide the rum. If you’re not a fan of neat spirits, order a longer cocktail instead. But a good Ti’ Punch at sunset on the beach is a tough thing to beat.

Local Beer

Phoenix is the dominant local lager, brewed in Mauritius since 1963 and available pretty much everywhere. It’s a light, clean lager that does exactly what you want when you’re hot and sitting somewhere with a sea view. Perfectly fine, nothing revolutionary.

More interesting is the Mauritian craft beer scene. Flying Dodo (launched 2011) does a decent hoppy range, and Thirsty Fox (launched 2019) turns out some really good beers. If you find yourself near a restaurant that serves either, try them over the Phoenix. They’re more interesting and they support small Mauritian brewers.

Local Wine

I didn’t expect to find wine in Mauritius. The climate isn’t exactly Bordeaux, and I wasn’t anticipating any vineyards in the tropics. Turns out I was right. There aren’t any grape vineyards. But the Takamaka Boutique Winery makes wine from litchis instead, including a few whites and a rosé. I wasn’t sure what to expect and was pleasantly surprised. It’s not going to replace your favourite Chardonnay, but it’s drinkable and the novelty alone makes it worth trying.

Tea

Mauritius has a tea-growing industry, and if you’re the kind of person who considers a cup of tea a small but essential civilisational achievement (which, being British, I do), it’s worth a day out. The Bois Cheri plantation does tours of the factory and an on-site museum, with tastings at the restaurant.

Better still, you can do the “tea route” as a full day: the colonial mansion Domaine des Aubineaux, the Bois Cheri plantation, and the Saint Aubin Colonial House and distillery. You can buy a combined ticket at any of the three, and driving between them is easy enough. Add a lunch somewhere along the way (it costs a bit extra but it’s worth it) and you’ve got a day that mixes tea, architecture, history, and a spot of rum. Hard to beat.

Where to Find Mauritian Food

There are four routes to eating well in Mauritius, and you’ll probably end up using all of them during a longer stay.

Street food stalls. The quickest, cheapest, and most characterful way to eat. Dholl puri, farata, boulettes, gato piments, rougaille wraps, fried noodles. All the quick, cheap classics are found this way. Look for stalls in Port Louis city centre, around markets, and near popular beaches. At lunchtime, watch where the locals queue and join that line.

Local recommendations. Ask your hotel staff, your driver, the shopkeeper, the waiter at the place you had lunch. Mauritians are hospitable and proud of their food, and if you ask where they’d send a guest for a specific dish, you’ll get real recommendations rather than tourist fodder. This is how we found Seabell, which ended up being the best meal of our trip.

Hotel restaurants (at the higher end). We stayed part of our trip at the Constance Prince Maurice hotel and the food across all their on-site restaurants was excellent. The Barachois, their floating seafood restaurant, was particularly memorable. Some of the best Mauritian specialities we had on the entire trip were served there. Most of the larger luxury resorts have at least one restaurant dedicated to Mauritian cuisine, and many have buffets that let you try a lot of dishes in one sitting without committing to a full plate of any one thing.

Independent local restaurants. Where the best Mauritian cooking actually lives. A few we’d single out:

The Seabell restaurant in Poste Lafayette was recommended to us by staff at the Prince Maurice. One of the staff’s mothers works there as a cook. We went in looking for Creole-style home cooking, and what we got was the best Mauritian meal of our trip. The chef put together a menu that ran from palm heart salad through salted fish rougaille, dholl puri, and butterbean curry, and we left significantly heavier than we arrived. Simple decor, friendly service, good prices. If you’re staying on that side of the island, call ahead or drop in to check what’s available.

Chez Rosy on the south coast came to us via my brother, who lived in Mauritius for three years and pointed us at a few places that weren’t on the usual tourist trail. It’s a traditional Creole restaurant, their curries are excellent, and the nearby walks along the Gris Gris coast make it a good lunch stop on a driving day. They don’t keep much of a web presence these days, so Google Maps is the easiest way to find it.

Canne à Sucre – Chez May in Flic en Flac does a good-value set menu that runs through the Mauritian classics. Slightly more expensive than the cheaper local spots but a sensible option if you want a spread of dishes in one meal.

And finally: if you really can’t decide, a Mauritian buffet at one of the bigger hotels is an underrated option. You’ll get to try ten dishes instead of committing to one, and at most resorts it’s included in the half-board rate anyway.

Food Tours and Cooking Classes in Mauritius

If you want to try a lot of Mauritian food in a short time, or you just want someone else to do the navigation for you, a guided food tour is a sensible way to go. A few options, depending on what you’re after:

• Port Louis street food tour. Three hours, around eight food stops covering the central market and Chinatown. If you only do one food outing, make it this one.
• Mahebourg village food tour. Half-day tour of Mahebourg, the south-eastern town near the airport. Food tastings, a full lunch, and a walk around the town.
• Port Louis culinary workshop. Four-hour cooking class where you make a traditional Creole meal and then eat it.
• Full-day Chamarel culinary experience. Market shopping, cooking class, meal, plus a tour of the Eureka Colonial House Museum. The most substantial of the options.
• Mauritius dinner packages and cooking experiences. A wider selection of food-focused experiences across the island, including private cooking classes hosted by local chefs, tasting dinners, and regional food tours. Worth browsing if the tours above don’t quite fit your trip.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the national dish of Mauritius?

Dholl puri is widely considered the unofficial national dish of Mauritius. It’s a thin pancake made from ground yellow split peas, turmeric, and cumin, usually served stuffed with butterbean curry or rougaille.

It’s a descendant of Indian flatbreads brought to the island by indentured Bihari labourers in the 19th century, and it’s eaten across the island at every social class, from street food stalls in Port Louis to upscale restaurants giving it a gourmet treatment. If you only eat one traditional Mauritian dish on your trip, this is the one.

Is Mauritian food spicy?

It depends what you order. Most Mauritian curries are moderately spiced rather than fiery, closer to a mild Indian curry than a Thai green or a Szechuan dish. Vindaye is tangy rather than hot. Rougaille has some chilli but is generally mild.

Where the heat lives is in the sides: achard (pickled vegetables) can be hot, and gato piments (chilli fritters) definitely are. The mazavaroo chilli paste served on the table is very spicy and should be approached with caution. If in doubt, ask for things without chilli (“pas de piment” in French or “pah for” in Creole) and add it yourself.

What do Mauritians eat for breakfast?

Breakfast in Mauritius is usually simple. Fresh tropical fruit (pineapple, mango, papaya, banana), yogurt, and bread (often French-style baguettes) are standard, reflecting the French colonial legacy. Dholl puri sometimes gets eaten for breakfast too, especially on weekends.

In hotels and resorts you’ll typically get a Western-style continental or buffet breakfast with local additions. If you want a more Mauritian start to the day, head to a street food stall. Some sell dholl puri or farata from early morning.

Are there good vegetarian options in Mauritius?

Yes, very much so. The Indian heritage of Mauritian cuisine means vegetarian cooking is deeply embedded rather than an afterthought.

Sept Cari (seven curries) is a vegetarian feast served on a banana leaf and is common at restaurants and temple events. Bean curries (cari gros pois), vegetable curries, dholl puri with bean filling, gato piments, boulettes filled with chouchou, and a huge range of vegetable rougailles are all standard. Many restaurants will have a dedicated vegetarian section of the menu.

What drink is Mauritius famous for?

Rum. Sugarcane has been grown in Mauritius since the Dutch introduced it in the 17th century, and the island has several well-regarded distilleries, including the Rhumerie de Chamarel, Saint Aubin, and New Grove.

The local cocktail version is the Ti’ Punch (neat white rum, sugar, lime juice, nothing else). Alouda (cold milk drink with basil seeds and vanilla) is the best-known non-alcoholic option, and Phoenix is the dominant local beer.

What is dholl puri made of?

Dholl puri is made from a simple flour-and-water dough that’s stuffed with a paste of ground yellow split peas seasoned with turmeric and cumin. The stuffed dough is rolled out very thin and cooked briefly on a flat iron pan (a tawa) until it’s soft and pliable.

To eat it, you either fold or roll the cooked pancake around a filling (usually butterbean curry, sausage rougaille, chutney, or pickle) and eat it like a wrap.

How does Mauritian food compare to Seychellois food?

The two cuisines share a Creole base (tomato-and-onion sauces, grilled fish, coconut-based curries in the Seychelles and herb-forward curries in Mauritius) but Mauritian cuisine has a much stronger Indian and Chinese influence because of the different migration histories of the two islands.

Seychelles food leans more heavily Creole-French with African influences, while Mauritius has full Indian and Chinese strands of cooking running through everything. You’ll find dholl puri, biryani, and fried noodles in Mauritius in a way you simply won’t in the Seychelles. Rougaille exists in both, and salted fish exists in both (though it’s easier to find in Mauritius these days). If you’ve been to one, don’t assume the other will feel familiar. They’re different cuisines sharing a few ancestors.

Is street food safe to eat in Mauritius?

Generally yes, and it’s where some of the best food on the island is cooked. Standard precautions apply: look for busy stalls with good turnover (food that’s been sitting is food to avoid), watch what gets cooked to order, and drink bottled water. If a stall looks clean and has a queue of locals, you’re fine.

We ate at a lot of street food stalls on our trip with no issues. If you’re nervous, a guided street food tour is a good way to visit vendors that have been vetted by the guide.

If you have any favourite Mauritian dishes I’ve missed, or you’d push back on any of the above, leave a comment below. I always love hearing from readers who know a destination better than I do.

For more on the cuisine I grew up with, have a look at my guide to the traditional Creole food of the Seychelles.