Lychees, pineapples and jamalacs: the markets of Mauritius

The fruit of Mauritius is rarely tasted at the hotel. It is found on market stalls, by the beaches, in the orchards of the old estates. Banana, pineapple, papaya, passion fruit, and the seasonal fruits that are lychee and mango: much of the island’s fruit comes from backyards, and it is at the market that it all comes together.

The capital’s central market, which Mauritians call the Bazaar Port Louis, is first and foremost a local market, where residents do their shopping. The stalls are piled high with tropical fruit and vegetables, and the hall rings with the prices that traders call out to catch the passer-by. Each section has its own character, and the whole market is worth walking before buying. People also eat standing up: samosas and dholl puri at the kiosks, sweet pastries, and a glass of alouda to finish. The Caudan Waterfront is a short walk away, and Chinatown begins next door.

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Flacq and Quatre Bornes

In the east, Centre de Flacq hosts the island’s largest open-air market, an unvarnished slice of Mauritian life. Locals buy their fresh produce here, traders call out their prices, and the smell of street food, cooked to order, accompanies the visit. Come on a Wednesday or a Sunday, when every stall is open. Several hotels on the east coast make an outing of it, by bicycle or on an excursion.

In the centre of the island, Quatre Bornes built its market in 1941. Around it, the town runs a series of fairs that set the rhythm of its week. In 2018, the Wednesday and Saturday vegetable fair had 543 stalls, alongside the haberdashery and fabric fairs on Tuesdays and Fridays and those on Thursdays and Sundays, each with more than five hundred stalls. The covered market, for its part, had 62 stalls of vegetables, meat, fish and cakes. The Thursday and Sunday fairs draw not only the people of Quatre Bornes but Mauritians from all over the island, and visitors.

Two fruits dominate the island’s production. In 2025, Mauritius harvested 13,342 tonnes of bananas on 815 hectares, and a little over 6,000 tonnes of pineapples on 291 hectares. The pineapple has its own local variety, the Victoria, which the island regards as a premium product. In the districts of Flacq and Pamplemousses, land once planted with cane has been converted to pineapple. On the Chamarel plateau, the road to the rum distillery crosses cane fields interspersed with pineapples.

The lychee is the fruit of the year’s end. For more than twenty-five years, the Mauritian lychee has been a benchmark on the European market, where it arrives early in the season, from November, and stays competitive until the end of December. For a long time it came from backyards. Garden trees have, however, declined sharply, and orchards have been planted all over the island: in the mid-2010s, some 346 growers cultivated lychee on 423 hectares. The mango, too, has its season, and there is also papaya, passion fruit, carambola and guava.

Finally there is the pamplemousse, which gave its name to a village and to its botanical garden. The Dutch introduced it from Java, and it has grown in the area ever since. Its fruit resembles a large, thick-skinned pomelo, slightly bitter. The Pamplemousses garden in fact owes its origin to a kitchen garden: in 1736, Mahé de Labourdonnais bought the Mon Plaisir estate there to feed his household, Port Louis and passing ships, and had cassava brought from Brazil, one of the garden’s first major introductions.

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Orchards and beach stalls

In the north, at Mapou, the Domaine de Labourdonnais keeps collection orchards, planted with old varieties of fruit tree. Alongside the house rums, visitors taste fruit juices, jams and fruit pastes, and the neighbouring nursery offers a wide choice of fruit trees. La Table du Château, on the same estate, cooks with the fruit grown on site.

Yet the most Mauritian fruit is eaten on the beach. Jamalac, a sweet fruit full of water, comes in several colours; street and beach stalls sell it in cups, doused in tamarind juice, with a little salt and chilli. On the beach at Mont Choisy, Tany has been selling fruit for twelve years. Her stall is piled high with pineapples, mangoes and pink and white jamalac, and she serves pineapple the way Mauritians like it, with plenty of salt, chilli and tamarind sauce. Her busiest day is Sunday, when families gather on the public beaches. It is there, cup in hand, that one understands that in Mauritius fruit is never eaten quite plain.