​​Mamayo’s Cuisine is a melting pot of flavour

I’ve tried every region of Chinese food, Peruvian, coastal French, the list goes on. I’ve eaten a lot.

But I’ve never had Mauritian food. And I’ve certainly never had it in Whitehorse. Until this week.

​​Mamayo’s Cuisine (no website) at 2193 2nd Ave has opened without much fanfare but it should be on everyone’s radar. The restaurant focuses on food from Mauritius, the island off the far coast of Africa.

A melting pot of different cultures — you can blame repeated colonization for that — you’re likely to find a healthy mix of Chinese, French, Indian, African and many more cuisines in Mauritian cooking.

hile India has a big influence, don’t expect to find traditional dishes like butter chicken. But you will find things like pakoras, deep-fried vegetarian chickpea balls full of onions and cabbage. Fresh is the best way to eat them, though I wish they had a bit more of a sweeter sauce accompanying them. 

Reflecting Southern Indian cuisine, you can find a masala dosa, usually a crispy, savoury pancake, like a crepe, full of masala curry. Since we ordered takeout, I suspect the crispness was lost in the delivery due to the steam, but it was still a tasty bite. Other classics include pakora and chapati. The samosas were fine but honestly, I find all of them a bit overrated. 

Chinese influences can be found in the fried egg noodles, a slightly sweet, black pepper-infused dish that we devoured. Perfectly cooked, with strong shrimp flavours and ample shrimp, you can see the Chinese influences, as some recipes I’ve read use Chinese staples of oyster sauce and Shaoxing wine.

But the winner of the evening was the lamb curry roti. Roti is, in my opinion, the perfect bread, fried, crispy and able to absorb sauce, it makes a nice alternative to a flour or corn burrito.

Mamayo’s lamb curry roti was exceptional. Nicely cooked chunks of lamb, strong curry flavour mixed with what almost tasted like sweet onions, it’s a salty, sweet (and yes, spicy) di that anyone in Whitehorse should try.

Mamayo’s Cuisine is new to the city, but a welcome addition. Like Whitehorse itself, it’s a mix of cultures and cuisines, that together elevate the food into something special and unique.