The Boathouse at Pointe d'Esny

Pointe d'Esny in the south-east is a small, quiet beach community near Mahébourg that's popular with kite surfers, divers visiting the Blue Bay Marine Park, and Mauritian families who have been coming to this particular strip of beach for generations. The Boathouse is the community's dining room: a converted boatshop on the water's edge with the original corrugated-steel walls left intact, tables on the deck, and a kitchen that has learned over the years that simple done well is always better than ambitious done poorly. The fish burger is made from a grilled fillet of the day's catch (usually capitaine or parrotfish) in a buttered brioche bun with homemade tartar, iceberg, and pickled chilli — it's one of the best things to eat on a beach anywhere on the island. The prawn taco — corn tortilla, spiced local prawns, mango salsa, lime crema — is the evening version of the same principle. The beer list is short and cold; the rum-based cocktails are generous. What makes the Boathouse work is the community it serves: the kite surfers ordering chips and beer in wetsuits, the diving instructors at the long table in the corner, the French retirees who've lived here for twenty years and still come every Friday. It is genuinely unluxurious and genuinely wonderful.