Mauritian Munch

Awful post titles aside, I had very few complaints about the food in Mauritius. To be fair a lot of our meals were catered due to the wedding functions taking up most of our meal times, and although all the various events had very nice food (including some old school biryani, the type I would find in my own home, at the wedding reception), I suspect it wasn't really a genuine reflection of Mauritian food.

When we did eat out, we seemed to be drawn to Chinese restaurants. This could have been uneventful except for the fact that Mauritian Chinese food seems to have been sourced from a different region of China to that what I'm used to back in the UK; it was different enough to note anyway. Otherwise we had a bit of seafood too which was, perhaps unsurprisingly, excellent.

But really for me it was all about the street food, the main example of which was the sublime dhal puri. I'm still amazed at how something so simple, so cheap, could bring so much joy and happiness to us, who sometimes weren't even that hungry. I'm not even sure what it is - something vegetarian - but I don't care. I still smile to myself when I think of the stuff. The only down side was how the stuff kept running out.



But even the stuff I did know about was amazing: the post-volcano samosas, the pre-diving roti (filled with anything from vegetables to squid), the Chinese Guava (which was nothing like Guava) and raspberries... We even spent a session before Jummah today in what I can only describe as a street food court sampling chilli cakes, falouda and other things I can't quite remember the names of. I'd never claim to be a foodie, but even I loved the constant attack on our taste buds.

Oh and the best cakes I had this week were made and brought to the events by a family member. I'm not quite sure who it was, but I have vowed to track them down.

And now I'm hungry.