Street Food in Mauritius

This post is about the Street food in Mauritius and about the nice people that you meet as you savour Food around the world! For months after I returned from my trip to Mauritius, there were two experiences that I thought about ever so often – one, was seeing and touching for the first time waters of the ocean that were unbelievably beautiful. The other experience was meeting people who were so very warm. On the streets and anywhere one went – the people were nice to you. If there was anywhere I would have been happy moving to forever from India, it was Mauritius.

I had walked the streets of Port Louis, Rosehill and La Caudan and enjoyed what I saw. I would watch as the locals stood by the street food stalls and savoured with relish – sometimes the dhol-puri and sometimes the samosa. Of course, I soon decided to be like a local and started to eat my lunches where I saw the most crowds at the street stalls. That’s a principle to follow, isn’t it? More crowds, tastier food?!

In Mauritius, the Dhol-puri is part of the local cuisine and not to be missed! The Dhol is yellow split peas cooked with spices. The puri is a kind of bread – wheat flour dough rolled out like the Indian roti which is stuffed with the dhol. This is served with tomato sauce and pickles.

I remember the first time we ate Dhol-puri was during our first week there, when we had hired a taxi for the weekend sight-seeing. I went to Mauritius three times that year on a work assignment – each time a great experience! Within half an hour of starting out that morning, the taxi-driver stopped at a roadside stall for his breakfast. We were invited warmly too. It was a Dhol-puri breakfast and the street vendor who served us was as warm and friendly as our taxi-driver. It was a great way to begin our day!

There is some interesting history to the origin of the Dhol-puri, which is similar to popular local cuisine in northern parts of India. The first of the Indians arrived in Mauritius in 1834 as indentured labourers to work in the sugarcane fields. The end of the 19^th century saw the arrival of Chinese migrants. Mauritius was colonised by the Dutch, the French and the British and became independent in 1968. Today, most Indo-Mauritians speak Creole and Hindi, sometimes Bhojpuri and English as well as French and the Mauritian cuisine is an interesting mix of French, Chinese and Indian cultures.

You find street vendors selling cut-fruit and pickled fruit. At the bus-stand in Port Louis, there are street vendors with glass containers on two-wheelers selling fried foods. These vendors mostly cater to the locals. When you get to the Caudan waterfront, you find the sugarcane juice stall that offers several varieties of the juice – natural sugarcane, sugarcane juice with lemon and ginger, chocolate sugarcane or sugarcane juice with yoghurt and aloe vera!

The street vendor at the Caudan waterfront caters to the tourist. The sugarcane juice stall is part of street vending but this is high-end street vending – better hygiene, higher pricing. It adds vibrancy to the pedestrianised zone at the waterfront and in terms of the investment from the vendor, a semi-permanent stall costs less than a shop within the Caudan shopping centre which has duty-free shops, fashion boutiques, a casino and restaurants. It is interesting to know that the floating tourist population in Mauritius is almost equal to the resident population of the Island.

It is true that not all of us can eat street food, even if it looks attractive. It is our levels of immunity that decide if we can survive it. Whether it is the Indian streets, Mauritian streets or the streets in Thailand, Indonesia or Puerto Rico, street food stalls continue to do good business – it is the survival of the fittest for both consumers and the vendors.

Read about:

Mauritius Bazaars
Things Indian Things Mauritian
Bollywood posters
a Street corner in Mumbai


This blogpost is part of the ‘Lonely Planet Blogsherpa Travel Carnival’ which is being hosted at Tie Dye Travels by Kat Robinson. Do check out the posts at: Food around the world!

Things Indian and Mauritian

You walk in a Bazaar in Mauritius and you can't help feeling you are in an Indian Bazaar.

Of course, suddenly, you see 'Le Maurice' on a hand-crafted shopping bag or posters that say 'Isle de France' or a picture of the Dodo pasted on a shop window and you are reminded that you are in Mauritius!




You read boards on shops such as 'Pooja ke Samaan' with the coconuts, the agarbattis and the brass lamps or the 'Wedding gallery' with the latest fashions in Indian sarees in the window displays.



And, then, you see the colourful skirts at a shop in the 'Grand Baie Bazar' and you recognise it to be the "Thing Mauritian" because you've pictures of Mauritian women with similar skirts dancing the Sega - the Mauritian dance and musical form introduced by the Africans who were brought to the Island during the French colonial period.



Its actually heart-warming to see the push-cart seller with coconuts and the pineapple, right here at the beautiful Grand Baie.

So, this is tropical Mauritius, a country off the South-east coast of Africa, to the east of the island of Madagascar, so far away from India.



You can bargain here just like in an Indian Bazaar. "I give you good price" is what you hear. These are Indo-Mauritians who form about 70% of the population of the island. Most of the Indo-Mauritians speak Creole. Many speak Hindi, Tamil and Bhojpuri.

As you approach a vendor, she first starts to speak to you in French or in Creole and then, as you start to reply in English, she says "I thought you were Mauritian, you from India, then?"

You still get very good price and you just stroll along on to the next shop, the colours of the Mauritian crafts reminding you of bazaars in India more than ever.

Related Posts:
Street Food in Mauritius
Mauritius Bazaars

Mauritius bazaars

There are bazaars in Mauritius that are organic in their planning. There are people in Mauritius of Indian, French and African origin. This reflects in its urban selling spaces.

Within the Bazar Rose Hill, as it is called amongst local residents, there are no demarcations between spaces that vendors occupy. It is a shared space. Recently, I had an opportunity to work on the 'Redevelopment of the Bazar Rose Hill' - a project initiated by the Municipal Council of Beau Bassin, a district of Mauritius.


Mauritius Bazar Rose Hill

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Presentations & Slid Mauritius Bazaar

The market occupies a triangular property surrounded on three sides by busy roads. It is a part of the Central Business District, where the real estate prices are high. This is a situation quite similar to our Indian markets. The city grows denser around a central marketplace. It was suggested that the market be temporarily moved to a part of the Duval stadium nearby and this triangular plot be redesigned as a Shopping cum Tourist complex. We eventually prepared an urban design proposal which permanently relocated the vegetable and fruit market to the stadium periphery and created a "market square" with additional buildings with contemporary shops and cafetarias. The second proposal was the architectural design solution for the original triangular site, with the idea of a place that would attract both tourists and local residents with its craft shops, eating outlets and facilities for business travellers to Mauritius.

In India, as elsewhere, it is always difficult to improve upon an existing market., as observed in one of my previous posts - Planning for the Transition

I walked around the Rose Hill region to study it as much as possible. I found that the character of the Bazar Rose Hill was made more interesting with the innovations in the outlets of the bread vendors. I also visited the Central Market in Port Louis and La Caudan waterfront with its contemporary shopping places .

In Port Louis, the capital city of Mauritius, the “market” is an entire region that consists of several streets that have grown from this nucleus that sells fruits and vegetables and where people congregate to buy their daily necessities.

Today, it is also an interesting area for tourists who can buy crafts, who can see what it is like to be in Mauritian markets and to be a part of the lives of the people here. 

Related Posts:

Street Food in Mauritius

Things Indian, Things Mauritian