Creole Shack: A Creole Lunch in Flic en Flac
Booking a table at Creole Shack works like this: you send a message on WhatsApp, ideally two or three days ahead, and the owner writes back in English to confirm. What you'll be eating, though, she won't say - you find that out once you sit down. There's no printed menu here and no website either; the day's menu comes together in the cook's head each morning. Creole Shack is a small family restaurant in Flic en Flac that cooks a single three-course menu a day - the kind of place known in Mauritius as a table d'hôte.
The Host's Table with an Official Stamp
Table d'hôte literally means the host's table, and the idea is older than restaurants themselves: at Paris inns, guests sat down at a shared table and ate whatever the kitchen had cooked that day, and by the end of the 17th century it was the most common way to eat out in the city. In Mauritius the format lives on in family-run places - and the island takes it seriously enough that the tourism authority issues a special annual license for home dining, with set opening hours and a parking requirement. A seat in the backyard with an official stamp. WhatsApp is part of the format too: small Mauritian businesses communicate that way as a matter of course, and for a guest it comes down to one thing - no message ahead, no lunch.
Chicken or Shrimp
Flic en Flac has at least two places like this and each one lays the table differently: Canne à Sucre puts on one big family feast with a long line-up of side dishes, while Creole Shack sticks to the familiar Sunday-lunch shape - soup, a main, something sweet to finish. The only decision a guest makes over the whole meal is chicken or shrimp. The kitchen has worked out the rest.
The Shack Where the Whole Island Cooks
The name promises little: a shack is a hut thrown together from whatever's around, and the interior doesn't pretend otherwise - a few wooden tables, corrugated metal on the wall, turquoise shutters. The word créole, on the other hand, promises a lot - and in Mauritius it doesn't stand for one narrow ethnic cuisine. It's what they call the whole local mix, the one the French, Indians, Chinese and Africans each poured something into. So a Creole lunch here can just as easily be built on curry, lentil soup and chutney - on the legacy of Indian immigrants. For that matter gâteaux piments, the fried bites that arrive as a starter at Creole Shack, are descendants of 19th-century Indian vadas; the shack clearly doesn't mind and the island keeps eating.
The Lunch I Didn't Order
I came to Creole Shack for lunch. Gâteaux piments arrived as a starter - and I'll admit right away that I ate plenty of them in Mauritius, but these were the best: fried to order, with a strong note of lemongrass, and a hot chili paste on the side for anyone who wants it. We tried both versions of the menu, so two beautifully arranged trays landed on the table: lentil soup with cilantro, tender pieces of chicken curry, basmati rice, a vegetable salad, coconut chutney, pickled mango and a green papaya salad - and in the second bowl shell-on shrimp in a red curry sauce, cooked perfectly. The coconut ice cream with mango at the end had fine pieces of fresh coconut in it; it was excellent, and in the midday heat it came at exactly the right moment. The chicken menu cost 725 MUR (14.80 EUR), the shrimp one 800 MUR (16 EUR). So the street snack half of Mauritius fries, I ended up eating at its best in a backyard you can't even sit down in without messaging ahead.
Creole Shack
