Where to eat near Lion Mountain

What eating looks like on this coast

The south-east is the least touristy coast of Mauritius, and that shows in how people eat. Vieux Grand Port, where the trail starts, is a fishing and farming village of about 3,000 people with small shops along the coast road and no restaurant you should count on. Mahébourg, roughly 15 minutes away by car, is the town, with a daily market, a bus station on the esplanade and a waterfront where people eat fried snacks from paper bags and look at the bay. Blue Bay and Pointe d’Esny have the hotel restaurants and a scattering of small places serving visitors. Inland, the Vallée de Ferney has a restaurant that looks across the bay at the mountain you have just climbed.

The food itself is Mauritian home cooking rather than resort cuisine. Expect fish and octopus from the lagoon, curries and rougailles, Indian flatbreads and fritters sold from stalls, Chinese-Mauritian noodles and fried rice, and fruit sold by the kilo. Portions are generous and menus are short. The places named below are examples that appear in current listings, not a ranking, and opening days change, so check before you go.

Street food at the Mahébourg market and waterfront

The market in Mahébourg runs every day and is busiest on Monday, when it roughly doubles in size and spreads textiles, produce and snack stalls through the streets around the central hall. It is the natural place for a late breakfast after a dawn climb. The snack that matters most is dholl puri, a soft flatbread with ground yellow split peas worked into the dough, folded around a spoon of bean curry, a tomato rougaille and chutney, and eaten by hand within a minute of being made. Gateaux piments, small split-pea fritters flavoured with chilli and spring onion, are sold hot in paper bags and go into a buttered bread roll if you ask.

Biryani is the other staple, cooked in large pots and served from around midday. One example that appears in listings is Pyramide, opposite the market, which is known for it. Around the stalls you will also find pineapple cut into spirals, bananas and papaya most of the year, and mangoes and lychees in the summer months. Buy fruit for the following day’s hike while you are there, because the village at the trailhead will not have the same choice.

The waterfront, a short walk from the market, is where Mahébourg eats in the open air. The esplanade runs past the Grand Port battle memorial of 1899 and looks straight across the bay at the lion, so the view you climbed for in the morning is now your lunch view. There are usually snack and drink sellers around the waterfront complex and the bus station, and the esplanade is where the town spends its evenings.

Fish restaurants by the water

Mahébourg and the coast south of it have a handful of restaurants that sit on or near the water and build their menus around what the lagoon gives. Fish is grilled or cooked as a vindaye of mustard, turmeric and vinegar, octopus arrives as a salad or a curry, and there is nearly always a Creole fish rougaille with rice and lentils. Lunch is the main service. Several places also open in the evening, but the town goes quiet early and the last buses leave Mahébourg around 18:00, so check before you plan a late dinner without a car.

Places that appear in current listings include Les Copains d’Abord and La Vieille Rouge for seafood in Mahébourg, Chez Patrick on Royal Road for Mauritian cooking, Le Jardin de Beau Vallon on the airport road, and Le Blue Bamboo at Pointe d’Esny. These are examples of what exists, not a ranking, and this guide does not publish prices or hours for any of them. Phone or look at a recent review the day before, especially on Sundays and public holidays.

Cassava biscuits at the Biscuiterie Rault

On the far side of the century-old Cavendish Bridge, where the coast road leaves Mahébourg towards the mountain, the Biscuiterie Rault has made biscuits from manioc, the cassava root, since around 1870. Sources give the founding as 1868 to 1870, so the honest version is that the recipe is a little over 150 years old. The biscuits are cooked on hotplates fired with cane leaves and come in seven flavours.

A visit is a short tour of about 20 minutes followed by a tasting, which makes it a natural stop between the trailhead and Mahébourg on the way back from the hike. It is also one of the few things on this page that works in the rain. Check the current hours before going, and remember that the biscuits keep well, so they are the obvious thing to carry up the mountain the next morning.

Lunch over the bay at Vallée de Ferney, and the village itself

The Vallée de Ferney is the conservation estate on the mountain’s north-western side, reached from a signposted turn-off on the coast road about 2 km south of Vieux Grand Port. Its restaurant, Falaise Rouge, is set on the slope with a view over the bay of Grand Port and the lion in profile, and it serves lunch, with venison from the estate’s deer among the dishes. Entry to the valley is paid, the activities run from 08:30 to 14:00 and the reception is open until 17:00, so lunch there is a middle-of-the-day plan, not a dinner. One visitor found the car park locked by half past four in the afternoon.

Pairing the restaurant with the kestrel feeding, which the estate runs at noon with visitors asked to arrive by 11:30, turns a late morning at Ferney into a full lunch stop. In Vieux Grand Port itself, be realistic. There is a shop on the main road a few steps from the trailhead and others along the coast road, so a cold drink, bread and a packet of biscuits are easy to find in the daytime. A sit-down meal is not. If you want breakfast before a dawn start, carry it from your accommodation or buy it in Mahébourg the evening before.

What to carry on the mountain itself

There is no water, no shade for the second half of the climb and nowhere to buy anything once you leave the village. The route is short, under 2 km each way on the mapped spine, but it is steep and the summit rock is open to sun and wind, so most people are out for 3 to 4 hours. Treat it as a proper mountain morning rather than a walk to a beach kiosk.

• Carry at least 1.5 litres of water per person, and more between December and March, when the airport station records daytime highs of about 30 °C.
• Pack something salty and something sweet. Fritters from the market the day before, dried fruit, a banana and a few Rault biscuits are enough for a summit break.
• Eat a real breakfast or carry one. A dawn start on an empty stomach makes the steep middle section feel longer than it is.
• Use repellent. Hikers mention mosquitoes in the cane and the forest on the lower slopes year after year.
• Take every wrapper and peel back down. The ridge has no bins and the village does not need your rubbish.

Timing the day around meals

Meal times on this coast follow the sun and the buses. A dawn climb leaves you back in Vieux Grand Port between 09:30 and 11:00, which is exactly when the Mahébourg market is in full swing and the first biryani pots are ready. Lunch at Ferney needs you inside the estate by early afternoon. The last buses out of Mahébourg leave around 18:00 and rural services run roughly from 06:30 to 18:30, so without a car plan an early dinner or eat where you sleep.

Monday is the day to be in Mahébourg if you can choose, because the market is at its largest. Sundays and public holidays are the days to check ahead, since smaller family restaurants keep shorter hours and some shut altogether; the Frederik Hendrik Museum beside the trailhead, for example, publishes Sunday hours of 09:00 to 12:00 against 09:00 to 16:00 on most other days. Sunset comes between 17:38 in June and 18:55 in January and dusk is short, so an early evening table on the Mahébourg waterfront with the lion still lit is a realistic way to end the day.