Rougaille and curries, slowly simmered

Some dishes are ordered; others are handed down. Rougaille belongs to the second kind. Every Mauritian kitchen has its own version, passed from one generation to the next, and it never tastes quite the same from one house to another. That is what makes it the best way into the island’s Creole cooking: a dish simple in principle and endless in its variations.

Rougaille, also spelt rougail, is a classic Mauritian dish based on tomato. Its depth comes from what goes with the tomato: onion, garlic, ginger, thyme, chilli, coriander and curry leaves. Once this base sauce is mastered, anything can be added to it: meat, fish, seafood, eggs, vegetables or tofu. Recipes are handed down from generation to generation, so that the flavour changes from one cook to the next.

Its basic ingredients are also those of Mauritian fields. In 2025, the island produced a little over 22,000 tonnes of tomatoes, grown in the open and under cover, more than 3,100 tonnes of chillies and nearly 2,300 tonnes of ginger.

The best-known versions are named after what goes into them. Creole sausage rougaille appears both at the table d’hôtes of Escale Créole, in Moka, and at Le Fangourin, the restaurant of L’Aventure du Sucre, in Beau Plan. Ram, a chef at Château de Bel Ombre with twenty-five years in the trade, has his favourite: salted-fish rougaille, with fried chilli, fried rice and lentils.

Curry is the other pillar of this cuisine. It accompanies dholl puri in the street, and at the table it comes in many forms. Fish vindaye is a form apart. It is a curry made with mustard, turmeric, onion and garlic, sharp and fiery in taste. It is usually prepared with fish, but also with chicken or vegetables, and served with rice, more often at dinner.

Venison holds a particular place in these dishes. Deer were introduced to Mauritius by the Dutch, at the same time as sugar cane and domestic animals, and the island had some 65,000 head in 2014. At Le Fangourin, the venison curry comes from the Domaine de Rambouillet. At Escale Créole, venison is cooked as a Creole salmi.

Escale Créole receives its guests on the Bois Chéri road, in Moka, in the interior of the island. This table d’hôtes serves lunch only, by reservation, from 12 noon to 3pm; it is closed on Sundays and opens on just one Saturday a month. On a Creole veranda opening onto a tropical garden, guests eat what Mauritians call “manzé lacaz”, home cooking. The table is run by a mother and her daughter, Marie-Christine and Majo, who work with produce grown on the island.

The traditional Creole meal here is made up of flavourful dishes of meat or fish, often slowly simmered: Creole sausage rougaille, cabbage and salted-fish cangraillé, zourite and green papaya curry, Creole venison salmi. They arrive together, with rice, lentils, a vegetable fricassée and chatinis. These dishes are not ordered one by one: they are set down on the table and shared, like the island itself.

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Where to sit down

Le Fangourin, at the heart of the old Beau Plan sugar factory, facing the lake and the Pieter Both mountain, serves Mauritian food made entirely on site, including Creole-style sausage rougaille, venison curry and a Mauritian tasting plate. Le Chamarel Restaurant, perched 260 metres above the sea on the Chamarel plateau, has made refined Creole cuisine its signature, with a menu it calls La Table Créole. In Grand Baie, Le Capitaine has served seafood and Creole cooking on the Royal Road since 1989, without a break from 11am to 11pm.

Hotels have their Creole tables too. At LUX* Grand Gaube, the Creole Smokehouse smokes this cuisine beneath a century-old banyan, next to a rum shack. At Solana Beach, in Belle Mare, Secrets Corner serves it in the traditional way, at dinner, from 7.30pm to 10pm. Everywhere the rule is the same: a simmered sauce, rice, lentils, and time to linger at the table.