It's Delicious, It's Mauritius!

The food in Mauritius is spectacular. It is very heavily influenced by the Chinese and Indian cooking traditions. Personally, i prefer the Indian influence. My absolute favorite item was the dohl pourri which is a thin crepe made of yellow lentils and chic peas with curried butter beans, piment (spicy sauce), and some other magic inside, rolled up and sold to you on the street for 7 Rupees, or 0.16 USDollars. Yes, 16 cents! Everything is so cheap there. We had marvelous meals for the equivilent of 8 Euros. Other highlights include farata (a tortilla-like bread) with which you pinch your food and eat with your hands. We pinched a salmon-tomato-eggplant dish, a pumpkin purée and those same curried butterbeans- and of course piment! My favoite dessert was this banane caramelisée with flaming rum sauce---ahhhhhhh! The piranha-looking fish on the plate was the barbeque on Ile aux Cerfs. You can buy coconuts whole, have the top chopped off, stick a straw in and drink the yummy coconut juice. When you're done with your beverage, you take it back to the stand and the man will slice the coconut in half so you can eat the inside and he will slice a bit off the bottom to use as a spoon. The last photo is Stephan's mom (Stephan is this really nice friend we made there who took us all around the island and had us over to his home few times for dinner) who took me to Chinatown in Port Louis for the "boutons chinois," or dim sum sold from a stand on the street. You sit there in the road and eat it, then pay the man. Amazing!