A kitchen built from
memory and smoke.
Priya Gounden
Head Chef · Port Louis
"I learned to cook by watching my auntie's hands, never from a recipe."
Priya grew up in the Plaine Verte neighbourhood of Port Louis, where the air on Sunday mornings tasted of frying gâteaux piments and cardamom-laced tea. Her mother ran a small table d'hôte from their veranda; her Tamil grandmother kept a mortar permanently stained with dried chilies.
Rougaille is that veranda, rebuilt. The menu is Mauritius at its most honest — the Creole tomato base that absorbs everything the island ever borrowed, the curry leaves that arrived with indentured labourers and never left, the Hakka soy that crept into fried noodles three generations ago and became Mauritian overnight.
Every dish is cooked from memory. None of it is fusion. All of it is home.
Alouda. Rose milk,
basil seeds, ice.
The drink that turns a humid Port Louis afternoon into a ceremony. We make ours with Mauritian rose syrup and fresh basil seeds, served in a frosted glass that sweats like a Phoenix lager in August.
