La Rougaille Creole — Restaurant in Isle Mauritius

LA ROUGAILLE CREOLE, 2 mains, 2 rum cocktails, 1 small local beer, 2 low calorie colas: MUR1780 (US$50, £41, AED180)

Creole food is many things to many people: Afro-Brazilian, US Louisiana, Seychellois, Criollo. It’s a big brush, a broad roof to house a people rooting back to colonial immigration. Europeans leaving to settle in Africa, Latin America, my West Indies and the Southern United States. It’s the slave trade triangle, an ethnic diaspora and the resulting melange of people, food and language.

So step forward La Rougaille Creole: a Mauritian seafood creole restaurant tucked a back street in Grand Baie (or Grand Bay).

I asked a shop owner if it was a good place to eat great local food: she smiled and nodded which was all the approval I needed.

It’s a modest restaurant with honey-wooden furniture and sunset orange walls. The menu welcomes you to the restaurant calling out that it’s focus in clearly creole and angels towards seafood. We needed no further signalling - we were picking up what they’re putting down.

Other options are available should someone in your group not care for creole nor seafood (but it makes this place an odd choice!).

We opted for the curried fish with aubergine and a curried crab with aubergine.

The waiter warned me that it’s a delicious dish but the crab is cooked whole and it takes some time. My inner id was triggered; wide eyed and anxious.

The scarlet crabs dipped in yellow curry arrive chopped into segments accompanied with rice, salad and a type of soft, local yellow pumpkin. It’s a plate nostalgia served without ceremony but with personal significance.

I’ll spare you the personal journey of this dish (which takes easily an hour to finish properly). The aubergine is a very pleasant addition that lends little flavour itself but serves as an obedient sponge to dutifully absorb this unctuous curry sauce. The crab’s distinct natural sweetness balances the dish out. If you are reluctant to fish every morsel of crab, you get 80% of what you need in the meaty crab backs and claws. The backs are soft and tear apart easily with you hands.

Oh yes, this is a dish for your hands. It comes with a crab claw cracker and spike, which is thoughtful.

There is no discernible coconut milk in this dish which is no big loss. It means the sauce is more prominent and it doesn’t dull the crab.

The fish curry is another generous dish but considerably easier to eat. The long slices of aubergine plays a grassy role. Coconut milk would be a good addition to this dish to bring it all together and provide some richness.

I should mention we were given a complimentary starter of deep fried aubergine slices in a thick batter with a citrusy-sour-meet-spicy dipping sauce. The unseasoned batter and naturally bland aubergine are unremarkable leaving it all to the tangy spicy dipping sauce to make a mark.

To wash this all down we indulged in Phoenix, a local Mauritian beer, and two rum cocktails made with fresh juice.

Service is friendly and quick: this is not always a given based on some horror stories we learned from other travellers.

Would I return to La Rougaille Creole? I admit nostalgia played a heavy hand in this experience. But it delivered. Nostalgia is a fickle mistress; sometimes makes you a voracious critic when authenticity fails to be achieved. It can also put the wind in the wings of a dish unintentionally triggering memories. I would definitely return nonetheless to find the courage to resist that crab dish and eat more of the menu.

Should you go to La Rougaille Creole? Yes, you should step away from the hotel fodder including their sanitised renditions of...

Absolutely dissatisfied with the restaurant. To start, the service was bad and the staff were unhelpful and rude. We booked and preordered a few hours ahead and still were left waiting for a table for 10 minutes, after we were finally seated, we had to wait 1h and 30 mins before the food came. Once the food came, it wasn’t too bad however it was cold, dry and definitely not worth the wait (1h30min). Moving back to the staff, we had to re-order some food as it was spicy. The staff were very slow and quite unhelpful, and racist towards a certain origin. I would not come back for 2 reasons:

The staff was rude towards us and disliked the fact that we wrote a negative, yet true review of their restaurant. Not only were they rude at us but they also were racist towards us whilst also having kids around.

The long wait time which are completely insane, we ordered ahead of time and booked, yet had a long time to wait than others who came unannounced and had ordered there.

The owner and staff tried to argue about our poor review and said it was unethical to put a bad review for a restaurant before starting to get offensive and racist. I understand that some may have had a more pleasant experience than us but what happened with the management staff and the owner is absolutely unacceptable and terrible. I hope I never have to come back to this place and that if I do the staff has either fully changed or the management ethics...

Honestly, this is very sad to say but we left the restaurant in such a bad mood... we posted a few reviews because of the poor and slow service received and we could have left it at that... but it is the FIRST time that I am seeing such an attitude from a restaurant receiving a review... we just expressed our opinion, but the way the staff started adapting a "sore loser" attitude, instead of trying to apologise and setting up new opportunities for customers to get compensated, was awful! We felt attacked and we perceived it as an arrogant attitude (asking us not to even come back because of our bad review 😶)

We absolutely did not appreciate the way they received the complaints and how they started 'scolding' us for putting a bad review.. I understand that it is not pleasant for one to receive a bad review, but it does not need to be taken as such as we felt aggressively told off because of that, and on top of that, we did not appreciate the RACIST comment.

What started as a small complaint about the service we received, quickly turned sour for them as now they are about to get more feedback and more negative reviews regarding the attitude towards us.. very sad for them but we do not wish anyone receiving such an attitude 😕

I am sorry but I have to denounce such behaviour since it was frankly disturbing for my...