Saturday 1 October 2011

Eat Like the Local

I’m at the end of my Seychelles vacation sitting at the airport waiting for my flight to depart for Singapore. Although it’s my 2nd trip to Seychelles, I enjoyed my stay and learned. Unlike the 1st trip that was filled up with diving, we managed to tour Seychelles capital Victoria, and also the whole island.

I found a fresh food market in Victoria, Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke Market also known as Victoria Market. Market has always being my favourite place to visit when I’m travelling. When there’s fresh food, there must be cooked food around as well. Where else to hunt for the most authentic local food other than the fresh food market?

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Selling salted fish. Got very tempted to get some but I didn't

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Homemade chilli. Don't be fooled by the colour! It's extremely spicy!

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DSC08420 Freshly caught fishes.

Along the stretch of street leading to the market is filled with shops. There are some small-scale provision shops that sell a tiny amount of cooked food, which are either deep-fried, or cakes and a few burger buns and pizza bread.
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I tried an egg roll, which looks like a spring roll but filled with chunks of eggs and a bit of potato. The skin was pretty tough, took me a few minutes to chew it into pieces before swallowing.
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I also tried a vegetable samosa. Though it was only filled with potato, it was tasty. Tasted very similar to curry puff in Singapore and the skin wasn’t as tough as the egg roll. DSC08418

I also found a local take-away shop next to the market that we stopped and had an early lunch. It’s similar to Singapore economical rice which 1 can chose from the range of cooked food on display. We wanted to eat what the local eat and felt that’s the best way to understand their living culture. But we didn’t manage to follow them exactly. Talking to the locals, we found out they usually will take away rice or noodle plus one or two dishes. As for both of us, we went crazy and had 3 different dishes excluding rice/noodle. The lady who served me was a bit shocked. She replied the box is already full when I ordered the 3rd dish.
DSC08406 Fried Noodle
DSC08405 Fried Rice
DSC08404 Braised Pork Belly
DSC08403 Sweet and Sour Chicken
DSC08402 Fish
DSC08401 Vegetable with Beef
DSC08400 Soya Chicken
DSC08399 Vegetable with Pork
DSC08398 Chicken Wings

Mr. take away box had rice with curry chicken, braised pork belly and stir fried vegetable with chicken. Curry chicken was yummy and pork belly was soft and flavoursome. DSC08409

As for mine, I had fried noodle with sweet and sour chicken, soya chicken drumstick and stir fried vegetable with chicken. Soya chicken was tasty and juicy. But the fried noodle was too saltish for my tastebud.
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 Lady also added some mixed salad into the box. There are a few salads for the customers to choose from.
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Each lunch box costs $85 Rupees. Expensive? Absolutely not comparing the price we paying in restaurant and hotels. It’s only slightly more than $5 Euro each. It was the cheapest and most satisfying meal we had in Seychelles.