Le Capitaine

Le Capitaine is attached to the Grand Bay Yacht Club on the northern coast and shares its dock with the sailing and kitesurfing crowds who make the north a centre of Indian Ocean water sports. The setting is deliberately unpretentious — picnic tables on a concrete dock, coloured lights strung over the water, the smell of diesel and salt from the boats. But the seafood is exceptional because the kitchen sources directly from the club's fishing competition participants and from the small pirogues that return to the marina each morning. The catch board changes twice daily: whatever came in that morning, cooked to order on the charcoal grill, priced by the kilo. Whole dorade rubbed with chilli and garlic, octopus tentacles charred at the edges, prawns in a simple butter and lemon reduction. The kapitaine in a light coconut broth — thin, fragrant, with kaffir lime and lemongrass — is the kitchen's best dish. The beer list is short but cold and abundant: Phoenix lager on tap and a rotating craft option from a small Mauritian microbrewery in Tamarin. Le Capitaine is best on a Tuesday evening when the sailing club races finish and the dock fills with salt-sprayed sailors arguing about the wind. The atmosphere is unstageable.