Foodies! This Mauritius festival is your shortcut to a galaxy of Michelin stars

The 16th edition of Constance Festival Culinaire was a culinary journey beautifully orchestrated by devoted chefs, hoteliers and food personalities over a weeklong festival in Mauritius. I was lucky enough to be invited to this unique and intriguing feast and share some of the many highlights.

PARTY TIME

The best way to kick off a festival is with a celebration. And a get-together Mauritian-style means music, dancing, rum cocktails and glorious food — the best the island has to offer.

We headed to a welcome lunch at the Chassé of Constance Belle Mare with Michelin star and other chefs. The mood buoyant, we entered the venue under an archway formed by a group of sega dancers dressed in vibrant colours. With garlands of fresh flowers around their necks, they were pulsating to the beat of drums.

Here there were different stalls proffering the unique tastes of the tropical island: rum, and aromatic spices such as chilli, cardamom and cloves which had been turned into tasty bites. We admired vast displays of fresh produce and tasted wine made on the island using lychee fruit.

We dined on a sumptuous buffet groaning with island specialities including plump oysters, prawns, smoked marlin and octopus. There was an exotic array of salads — the Mauritian favourite of hearts of palm; tropical fruit platters; meat barbecues; and whole fish cooked over the coals. 

CULINARY COMPETITIONS

Taking place from March 11-19, this was to be a week of prestigious contests, culinary masterpieces and great winners. The competitions featured chefs from around the world, plus a lineup of local talent from the Constance Hotel group, which has seven properties in Mauritius, Seychelles and the Maldives. Each chef was partnered with a Michelin-star counterpart; the pastry chefs worked alongside European patisserie experts; and chocolatiers in the making competed with some of the finest maestros.

Hotel guests were invited to visit the hotel kitchens to witness the chefs in action, soaking up the excitement and of course the tension of competitive cook-offs.

The Blue Penny Cellar restaurant in the hotel is where the judging happened — each day a different competition featuring a new panel of experts. Each event garnered much excitement. The restaurant was crammed with onlookers like me holding cellphones to capture it all alongside TV cameras, lights and tripods. It was a heaving visual feast.

The best part of these daily competitions for the supporters was after the judges were finished, the scores collated and the dishes captured on camera. Then it was our chance to taste. 

Some of the competitions had a more serious tone, such as the Bernard Loiseau Trophy (see box), in which six of the visiting Michelin star chefs, paired with a Constance chef, had to prepare a starter and main course using specified ingredients.

A sweeter note was struck by the Pierre Hermé Trophy. An internationally lauded French pastry chef and chocolatier, Hermé was the senior judge in the festival. He has confectionery boutiques around the world and his macaroons are considered some of the best — and I can vouch for that having tasted them. This segment involved pastry chefs paired with visiting chefs to create pastry and chocolate creations.

There was even an Art of Table Setting Trophy, for which Constance waiters and chefs competed in presenting the best service and table presentations.

MICHELIN STAR DINNERS

For the duration of the festival, each night different restaurants around the hotel and at its sister establishment Constance Prince Maurice Hotel offered dinners by the visiting Michelin star chefs matched with superb wines. Each was a multi-coursed gastronomic feast which gave guests an opportunity to enjoy five-star dining without having to leave the comfort of the hotel.

The Twelve-Hand Dinner was orchestrated by three-starred Michelin chefs at Constance Prince Maurice hotel — Alain Bianchin of Belgium, Riccardo Gaspari of Italy and Thomas Wohlfeld of Germany. Together with three pastry chefs from the Relais Desserts association, they produced a stunning feast served with a selection of excellent French and German wines to match each course.

There were decadent shrimps from Madagascar with fermented kohlrabi, a black Angus tenderloin with market vegetables, and more. It was the desserts that gave the meal a wow factor, a trio that included pineapple infused in olive oil, a banoffee, flower with banana and pecan nut treat and, of course (what's a dessert without chocolate?), a chocolate with mango confit and passion fruit. Delicious.

My highlight of the week was the memorable fine-dining affair at a floating restaurant. Dinner at Le Barachoise at Constance Prince Maurice is a culinary experience with a difference as it is built on stilts on a lagoon alongside the hotel.

The Michelin-star meal was courtesy of chef Sascha Kemmerer from Austria. Part of the event is to enjoy sundowners in the cocktail bar, also on water, before heading to the restaurant for dinner. Chef Kemmerer wooed us with his six-course menu that consisted of an Asian beef tartar, avocado and an umami vinaigrette amuse-bouche followed by a foie gras and cured salmon dish. Main was a tasty, medium-seared veal rack with a truffle jus; and the meal ended on a high note of salty shortbread, passion fruit ganache and dark chocolate.

This was island-style on steroids.

No foodie visit to Mauritius would be complete without a visit to the source of the beautiful fresh fruit and vegetables we’d enjoyed, the Fruit and Vegetable Market in Port Louis. About an hour's drive from Constance Belle Mare Plage on the east coast, the picturesque trip offered a window to the island. The beautifully lush, green scenery was in stark contrast to the busy capital city — bustling, hot and humid.

The tall market hall has two levels. The upstairs balcony offers vistas down on to the sellers and their eye-catching produce. A riot of colour, the produce is stacked like works of art — almost too good to buy. On the day of my visit there were mountains of ruby red tomatoes, the garden green of the freshest coriander tightly packed together like a forest, tons of fresh chillies the colours of the rainbow and mounds of pearl-white garlic and onions. Not forgetting the fruit — pineapples, granadillas, mangoes and watermelons.

And allow time to visit the market cafes, each with its own speciality. A standout for me was the way Mauritians prepare and serve pineapple. I marvel at the skill of the knife in removing the pesky “eyes”, creating a sculptural masterpiece of the humble fruit. Dipped in chilli powder as they do, it’s heaven. 

• Hilary Biller was a guest of Constance Hotels & Resorts, Constance Belle Mare Plage

THE STORY OF THE FESTIVAL

Originally known at the Festival Culinaire Bernard Loiseau, the Constance Culinary Festival was named in memory of the famed and much loved French chef who achieved his ambition of a third Michelin star for his La Côte d'Or restaurant in Burgundy in 1991. It was the only restaurant in France to be promoted that year.

Twelve years later, just weeks before the release of the 2003 Michelin Guide for France, Loiseau completed service in his restaurant, went home, walked upstairs to his bedroom and shot himself. With no suicide note it was difficult to pinpoint the reason, though weeks before his death rumours had started circulating that Loiseau's food had lost some of its sparkle and that he was about to lose his cherished third star. His wife Dominique maintains his legacy, and continues to run La Côte d'Or, now known as Relais Bernard Loiseau, as a hotel and restaurant with the aid of loyal staff, including chef Patrick Bertron. 

• The 17th edition of The Constance Culinary Festival will take place March 9-16 2024. See constancehotels.com.

Air Mauritius offers 15 direct flights weekly from Johannesburg to Mauritius.