Sakura Restaurant - Japanese food in Grand Bay, Mauritius

If you haven't already read the darling's previous post on her cupcakes, make sure you take a read. And make sure you try them too, because I (and about 30 other people in the office) can vouch for the cupcakes being absolutely delicious! For me ... being significantly less talented in the kitchen, I'll stick to eating out and writing about it :P

So back to a good ol' fashioned food review! In all my travels to maybe a dozen countries over four continents, I've always been able to find (in addition to the 'home' cuisine) three countries' food in relative abundance: Chinese, Japanese and Indian. Surprisingly Mauritius has a distinct lack of Japanese joints - a quick search on restaurants.mu shows only five on the entire island. Probably because Mauritius isn't a particularly popular holiday destination for Japanese tourists?

Whatever the reason, took the darling to Grand Bay, to try out Sakura Restaurant.


While the decoration and the furniture is long overdue for a refresh, the service is pretty good. We're seated at the front 'relaxing' area for drinks and cold towels while ordering our food, and while waiting for the waiter to set our table.


We decide to just share a Yakitori Set Lunch (600 Rs), because neither of us are particularly hungry. It starts off with an appetizer dish of salad and some deep-fried fish, which was OK-tasting.


The set lunch comes with fried rice and miso soup. We're impressed that the restaurant served us one bowl each (even though we only ordered one set). Fairly certain most other restaurants would have just said 'since you're too cheap to order two sets for two people, then you can share one bowl of rice and soup.'


The yakitori turns out to be tender and delicious. You're free to choose from Chicken, Chicken Wings, and more exotic chicken bits (liver, gizzards, etc), but we settled for just regular meat :)


We finish the lunch back at the 'relaxing' area for fruits, hot green tea and more cold towels.


Overall, the food was pretty good, if a little pricey - the green tea was 80Rs each! Total cost for the lunch came up to 874 Rs (RM 90) after 15% VAT. There also wasn't that much choice on the menu in terms of sushi and sashimi, though that's probably mostly caused by the (lack of) patrons - the darling and I were the only ones there on a Saturday afternoon.


Sakura restaurant is located in Grand Bay, which is the main tourist area located on the North-West-ish tip of Mauritius.

Photo Spam: Mauritius Diary (Post #4, Day 36)

Interrupting the restaurant reviews to bring you my 4th Mauritius Diary Photo spam post! First off - three photos of some random beach on the South-West area of the island.






Welcome drink from a resort we stayed in over the weekend - Le Meridien Ile Maurice.


Some shots of the beach at the resort ~








Different beach - this one is Grand Bay, which is pretty much the most 'commercialized'/touristy beach on the island.


Finally - a random shot of a fisherman. Can't remember which beach this was on, though :)


Stay tuned for the next set of photos!

La Rougaille Creole - Grand Baie, Mauritius

Continuing my Mauritius journey, the darling and I, after an hour-long search in vain for another restaurant, find ourselves seated in La Rougaille Creole in Grand Baie (north-west corner of the island). It's a pretty cozy restaurant by the roadside, with an extremely friendly waiter.


Appetizer (free) is some sort of deep-fried eggplant, served with a chili dip. The chili is delicious, has a very unique taste to it - but it's also pretty hot. Shame that neither of us are big eggplant fans, though.


We open up with Seafood Gratin, which is chunks of calamari, octopus, fish and prawn in a thick cream-based sauce, topped off with biscuit crumbs. Heavenly!


For mains, we restrict ourselves to the "Creole" section of the menu, of which I pick out Beef Curry. It's a bit of a disappointment - while the curry is spicy (flavorful), it is also not at all spicy (hot). I'm not a chili fanatic, but I prefer my curries to have some "kick" to them. Beef was a bit tough, too.


The darling's Calamari in Creole sauce was similarly unimpressive. Hardly tasted any different from just a tomato sauce. Calamari itself was nice and fresh, though.


Unfortunately we come away rather disappointed. Seeing as Grand Baie is essentially a tourist area, it's possible the cooking wasn't authentic Mauritian Creole cuisine. That, and the somewhat expensive price - lunch for the two of us was about a thousand rupees - about rm100.