Fish, rice, coconut and a spice cupboard you will recognise
Eating in Seychelles
What Creole food actually is, where to eat on each island, and a straight answer on vegetarian and Jain food.
Four kitchens, one island.
Seychellois cooking is what happens when African, French, Indian and Chinese kitchens share one small island for two hundred years. The base is fish, rice and coconut milk. The seasoning is ginger, garlic, chilli, turmeric and curry leaf, which will taste closer to home than most Indian visitors expect. And the vocabulary is French, so a menu reads like a puzzle until somebody translates it.
Vegetarian and Jain food, honestly
Section two, not section nine. For a great many families reading this it is the question the trip turns on.
The short answer is yes, with planning, and no if you turn up and hope. Seychelles is a small country that imports most of what it eats. There is no vegetarian restaurant of the kind an Indian city takes for granted, and the default plate in a Creole kitchen has fish in it.
What works. Self-catering. It is the single most reliable answer and it is why so many Indian families on this island stay in an apartment with a kitchen rather than a hotel room. The supermarkets in Victoria carry rice, lentils, atta, ghee, paneer, Indian spices and Indian brands, because there is a resident Indian community here buying them.
What also works. Telling a hotel before you arrive, not at breakfast on the first morning. Kitchens here are small and order their supplies weekly, so a request made at booking is a different request from one made at the table. Say vegetarian, and if it is Jain say Jain and say what that means, because the term is not widely known here.
What to watch for. Fish stock in a vegetable soup. Dried fish in a chutney. Shrimp paste in a sauce. Lard is not common but fish is everywhere, and it is not thought of as meat by a cook who has not been told otherwise. Ask specifically rather than asking for something vegetarian.
And the good news. Fruit here is extraordinary and it is everywhere: mango, papaya, passionfruit, banana of four different kinds, jackfruit, custard apple. A breakfast of fruit and bread is not a compromise on this island, it is the correct order.
Where Indian food is on the record
Our own directory has 8 restaurants with Indian food named either in their own listing text or in their own Google reviews. That is the whole list, and it is the evidence rather than our opinion. There will be others we do not know about.
The Maharajas
Ocean Beach restaurant
Aloha Restaurant and Bar
Curry Nation Multi Cuisine Restaurant
The Copper Plate
Ochan Restaurant
Fish Trap Restaurant
Tarosa Restaurant
Photographs: The Maharajas Ann Povaluhina Aloha Restaurant and Bar Daniela Hansekowitz The Copper Plate Anat Rosenfeld Gabriele Fogli Tarosa Restaurant and Takeaway
What Creole food is
The everyday plate is grilled or curried fish with rice, a lentil dal, a chutney made from green papaya or golden apple, and a bottle of chilli paste on the table that is hotter than it looks. Octopus curry is the dish the country would put on a stamp. Breadfruit turns up boiled, fried and as chips.
The Indian layer in it is not a coincidence. Indian traders and labourers have been on these islands since the nineteenth century, and the spice cupboard came with them. Turmeric, cumin, coriander seed, curry leaf and cinnamon are in a Seychellois kitchen for the same reason they are in yours.
The French layer is in the technique and in the names: bouillon, daube, rougaille. The Chinese layer is in the noodles and the stir-fried vegetables that turn up on almost every menu, and on a strict-vegetarian day that section of the menu is often the one worth reading first.
Where to eat, island by island.
49 restaurants across the three inhabited islands, sorted by how many people have reviewed them rather than by what we think of them.
Eating on Mahé
The island with a choice
Eating on Praslin
Côte d'Or, and not much else
Eating on La Digue
Small kitchens, early evenings
Photographs: Kafe Kreol Cafe & Restaurant Lobster Bay Restaurant (Praslin) Irmi
How eating out actually works here
Book, even when it looks quiet
Worth knowingKitchens are small and staff are few. The good places on Praslin and La Digue fill and then simply stop cooking. Your hotel will make the call, and on La Digue that is usually how it is done.
Lunch is the easy meal
Worth knowingTakeaway Creole from a roadside kitchen at midday is the best value food in the country and the way most people here eat. Victoria market at lunchtime is the single best introduction to what the island actually cooks.
Dinner is early
Worth knowingKitchens close earlier than an Indian visitor expects. Nine o'clock is late here and on La Digue plenty of places have stopped by half past eight.
Cash, and cards
Worth knowingCards work in hotels and the larger restaurants. Small kitchens, takeaway counters and the market are cash, in rupees Seychellois. Draw cash before you leave the main island if you are going to Praslin or La Digue.
Sunday is quiet
Worth knowingA lot of family-run places close on Sunday, and on La Digue the choice on a Sunday evening is genuinely small. Plan the self-catering night for then.
Water
Worth knowingTap water on Mahé is treated and generally fine. Bottled is universal and cheap. On the smaller islands, use bottled.
What people ask.
Is there Indian food in Seychelles?
Can we get pure vegetarian food?
Will a kitchen understand Jain food?
Is the food very spicy?
How much does eating out cost?
Can we drink the tap water?
What we do arrange.
We do not sell meals. We do sell the car that gets you to the kitchen on the far side of the island, which on Mahé is the whole problem.
Car hire, from €45 a day
Ten cars, no deposit, handed over at the airport, the jetty or your hotel.
Days out and excursions
Island tours, boat days, snorkelling and walks, with real ratings and free cancellation to twenty-four hours.
Airport transfers
A driver who watches your flight number and waits with your name on a board.
The terminal photograph above: Remi Jouan, CC BY-SA 3.0
Eating well for a fortnight, with a requirement
Vegetarian, Jain, or simply a family that will not eat fish twice a day. Tell us and Meera builds the week around the kitchen rather than around the hotel.