Mauritian Food Festival at the Cape Dieu Donne

With the assistance of the Mauritian Embassy, coming out to the Cape for the Festival will be two top chefs from the prestigious Mauritian Naiade resort group as well as a Sega dancing group who will perform on the restaurant's lawns over-looking the Valley and bring a true touch of the islands to the Cape.

The Dieu Donne Vineyards and restaurant, the latter of which celebrates its first anniversary with the Festival, belongs to Robert Maingard, a Mauritian who has made Franschhoek one of the places he calls home.

While the island is proudly Mauritian, it has retained that particularly French belief of gastronomy as an extension of daily cultural reality although, while taking its culinary cue from France, Mauritian chefs eschew the heaviness of sauces for the alchemy of spices - cardamom, nutmeg, yellow chilli powder - to magnify a dish.

“The Mauritian culinary esprit is to coax the flavours into releasing their intrinsic potential,” says Dieu Donne's Jo Van Staaden. “Sauces nutritionally became too heavy in the Mauritian climate. So the chefs use spices to create culinary magic, making meals healthier and lighter in the process.”

The Mauritian Food Festival starts on March 27 with a buffet dinner while March 28 will include an a la carte lunch menu including Mauritian taster platters and a buffet dinner.

For dinner expect an exotic Mauritian cocktail on arrival, dinner of Mauritian poached salmon and prawn and palm hearts followed by a gastronomic Mauritian buffet including sausages in spicy tomato rougaille, chicken, beef and vegetable curries, fish vindaye (pickled), a sautéed vegetable fricassee (featuring lentils and red beans) and exotic islands chutneys.

A traditional Mauritian dessert buffet (including poached green papaya and flambéed bananas) completes the tropical taste tour.

Since a direct flight was introduced between Cape Town and Mauritius, there has been an increasing two-way traffic between the two destinations, and the Mauritian Food Festival will be a note-worthy culinary-cultural exchange.

With its entrancing setting high on the eastern slopes of the Franschhoek Mountains, Dieu Donne Restaurant - which guests enter via a sandstone staircase with flowing natural spring water on either side - has the most spectacular of views over one of the world's most beautiful valleys and has made its name with food devoted to various world styles.

For more info contact Dieu Donne Restaurant, Dieu Donne Vineyards, Uitkyk Street, Franschhoek, tel: 021 876 3384.