Mauritius

Mauritian cuisine is a true melting pot, fusing Indian, Creole, Chinese, and French flavors into curries, rougaille tomato stews, and street-food dholl puri. Chili, coriander, and island produce define its vibrant plate.

Dholl puri comes in pairs, thin flatbreads stuffed with ground yellow split peas and served folded around bean curry, rougaille and chilli paste, and it arrived with Indian indentured labourers in the nineteenth century, the same history that gave Trinidad its doubles and Fiji its curries. Gateaux piments, the split-pea chilli fritters, are the other thing sold at every corner.

Mauritius had no indigenous population at all, so the melting-pot description is literal rather than decorative: everyone on the island descends from someone brought or arrived, whether enslaved from Africa and Madagascar, indentured from India, migrant from China, or colonial from France and Britain. The cooking is the record of that, four traditions using the same tomatoes, chillies and coriander.

Wok-fried egg noodles tossed with chicken, prawns, and vegetables in a savory sauce, Mauritius's favorite street lunch.