Some twenty years ago my wife's little sister announced that she was going to get married in Kenya with only close family present. Then came some dreadful terrorist attacks and Foreign Office warnings and everything was diverted east, to Mauritius.

My wife and I decided to spend a week on the French department of Reunion before flying over to the neighbouring island for the wedding. Reunion was an amazing, magical island. A part of France where you spent Euros in Carrefour supermarkets with live volcanoes, apls, coral reefs, tropical beaches and more dead volcanoes. It remains the most fascinating and favourite holiday I have ever had and I long to return one day.

Then, for the second week we ended up in an all-in six star resort at Flic en Flac on Mauritius, a place with nothing interesting whatsoever. It was literally the most boring place I have ever visited in my life.

I reverted to hiring a bike to take me out of my luxury compound and found a restaurant in a nearby town. There I ate a decent curry, the only genuine reference I have to Mauritian food. For an island that has a history of being run by the French and significant influence from both Indian and creole food as well as seafood in abundance, its cuisine is seriously neglected.

So, time to set this right with this month's review. Flavour of Mauritius has been on Caversham Bridge Road for nearly a decade now. I have visited a couple of times but found the food uninspiring.

Yogeeta, the owner, lost her sense of taste during the pandemic (a similar fate befell my brother) and I think this reflected on the food back then. As someone with sinusitis who occasionally looses senses of smell and taste this horrifies me. Loosing half of your senses is a huge handicap for a chef. But I am glad to report that this is no longer an issue.

 


Spice Route Swartland 2017 Chakalaka


The food and the experience was faultless. On a very quiet Thursday Yogeeta, served us, cooked for us and entertained us in between painting the new hookah gazebo out back.


One of my concerns when writing reviews on the usual platforms in pre-inReading days was the impact I would have on a business in a world where only one or five stars now seem to exist and Google and TripAdvisor rule the roost, making or breaking little family run businesses with their useless algorithms and blanket domination. Yogeets claimed to have received a one star review from someone who claimed that the bones in her on-bone chicken were too hard. This is our modern online world. This is how we now judge and value ourselves as a community and as consumers. One stars or five stars. Nothing less, nothing more. Isn't it time to dust off those two, three and four star ratings? Or better still, for the web giants to come up with a better way of enabling people to recommend things?

But, back to the task at hand - most of you will know that Mauritius is an island nation in the Indian Ocean, between Africa and Australia and south east of India, discovered by the Arabs in the 9th century and the Portuguese in the 16th century. The Dutch established the first settlement in 1638 but abandoned it in 1710, leaving behind introduced sugarcane and animals. The French took control in 1715, naming it Isle de France and developing it into a prosperous colony. In 1810, the British seized Mauritius during the Napoleonic Wars. Under British rule, Mauritius became a major sugar producer, relying heavily on imported labor from India after the abolition of slavery in 1835, but many of the existing French settlers stayed on and were able to continue their language, traditions and even legal system, unlike most other British colonies. The island gained independence in 1968 and much of the French influence persists alongside a more native Creole tradition.

With most of the population originating from India, the flavours and curries will be very familiar to you, with some twists.

Once more I was reunited with my friend G, who has never visited Mauritius nor tasted the food, so I will ply this review with his mmms and ahhs.

We convened at The Moderation up the road for a swifty before approaching the somewhat darkened exterior of the restaurant, brightly painted but, for the time being, lacking light on the inside. We were warmly greeted by Yogeeta and the lights came on. It is a dark but nicely themed room but I suspect that there are few takers for the couple of tables outside on the horribly busy Caversham Road.




To start we had stuffed roti - chappatti bread stuffed with cuminy tomato and potato. Both G and I said yum.



The aubergine fritters were soft blankets of deliciousness, perfect with the accompanying coriander sambal. This also accompanies the fish patties, which could have been a bit fishier - I think salted fish would traditionally be used and this was nice but lacking some oomph.

Prawn, egg and chicken noodles were tangy and nice, featuring three fully clothed and large prawns with a chopped omelette on a bed of tangy soy noodles, representing the Oriental influence that also pervades Mauritian cooking.

The vegetable rice was equally flavoursome, yumyum. With a glass of good red there is nothing better than some greasy carbs packed with umami. We ordered a Spice Route Swartland 2017 Chakalaka, which was utterly deep and delicious, matching the richness of the food. It's a wine I've not encountered in a restaurant before, but should be a staple for any Indian worth its salt - matching spicy food is a hit and miss affair at best, as I'm sure you will all have experienced.

The octopus vyndalo (presumably the name has the same source as Vindaloo or Vinha d'Alhos in Portuguese) with its sharp, mustardy taste, was recommended. I have eaten this dish several times before and have always regretted it. It tastes heavily of mustard and this is not one of my favourite things. If it is, you are going to enjoy this cold dish. The octopus was long cooked until tender, but you could not taste its delicate flavour and even the onion was subsumed by the mustardiness. G was mmming away, though, so this was just my taste buds - but a mental note for my next visit.

 



We selected the on the bone chicken curry, which came with potatoes and peas. It was mild and delicious. The meat fell off the bone and, in my opinion, there are few meals that cannot be improved with the addition of peas. I regret that we did not ask for it hot, however, when given the mild-medium-hot option.

We arrived at half one and left at four. The sun was shinning on Caversham Road. For a moment, we felt like Mauritians. Life sometimes demands a slow pace with good food and good drink. Then the lights turned green and the traffic roared past.

Flavour Of Mauritius is a great, sunny alternative to local Indian restaurants and a destination in its own right. If you live in Caversham, especially, it is worth a short hop over the bridge, perhaps pausing as we did for a pit stop at The Moderation. I took the Buzz bus all the way home, which in these days of hellish international travel, is better than a twelve hour plane journey (when I visited Mauritius we went via South Africa and it was over twenty hours).

And if you really want that absolute metric at the bottom of this review, then cut and paste it into an AI engine and ask 'How many stars would this reviewer give out of 5?'.