Traditional food of Seychelles: 13 dishes to know

Seychellois food is Creole cooking built on fish, rice, coconut and chilli, with French, African, Malagasy, Indian and Chinese roots. Fish is grilled, salted, smoked or curried, and coconut milk goes into curries and desserts. The most emblematic dishes are cari coco, grilled fish with ginger and chilli, octopus curry and ladob.

Updated 2026-10-124 min read

What Seychellois food is built on

Seychelles had no permanent inhabitants before the French settled in 1770, and the islands passed to Britain in 1814. Sugarcane, farmed by enslaved people, dominated the early colonial years; after slavery was abolished in 1835, coconut became the main crop and came to dominate the cooking too. Malagasy slaves brought Austronesian cooking methods, and Chinese and Indian merchants brought spices and fruits. The result is called *Creole cuisine* locally.

On an archipelago of 115 islands, fish comes first. It is steamed, grilled, wrapped in banana leaves, baked, salted, smoked or curried, and almost always eaten with rice. Ginger, lemongrass, coriander and tamarind are common, alongside curry powder, curry leaves, cinnamon bark and cinnamon leaves. Most dishes come with *lasos piman*, a local chilli sauce. Because the islands are small, the fresh ingredients on offer can change from day to day. There is no official national dish.

Curries and rougay

• Cari coco — Coconut curry, *kari koko* in Creole: chicken or fish simmered in coconut milk with masala, turmeric and Seychelles cinnamon leaves, eaten with white rice and chutney. Curries, *kari*, are the most common style of meal. Coconut curries are a speciality of Mahé, Praslin and La Digue.
• Octopus curry — *Kari zourit*: small pieces of octopus cooked with grated coconut, onion, garlic, tomato paste, curry spices, ginger and herbs such as thyme and parsley. Fish and octopus curries are the traditional versions. Limpets (*kari bernik*) and, in the past, fruit bat and goat were curried the same way.
• Sosis rougay — Sausage *rougay* (rougaille in French): local coarse, salted sausages in a tomato and onion sauce with garlic, ginger and chilli. The same sauce is made with salted fish, *pwason sale*, preserved by salting and drying in the sun from the decades before refrigeration.
• Dhal — Lentils cooked for a long time with garlic, onion and ginger until they turn into a yellow purée. It is a key side dish of a traditional curry meal, next to rice and chutney.

Fish and seafood

• Grilled fish — Slits are cut down the side of a whole fish and stuffed with garlic, ginger and chilli, then the fish goes over hot coals, often fired with coconut husks. Red snapper, *bourzwa* in Creole, is the classic, and barracuda is also grilled this way. The sound of a conch shell traditionally announces that fresh fish has come ashore for sale.
• Satini reken — Shark chutney: boiled, skinned shark mashed finely, cooked with the juice of bilimbi, a sour local fruit, and lime, then mixed with fried onion and spices. It is eaten on rice with lentils and grated green papaya. *Satini* also means grated chutneys of green papaya or golden apple.
• Smoked fish salad — Smoking was a way to keep fish before refrigeration. Larger, darker fish such as swordfish, sailfish or tuna is smoked and served cold in a salad with vegetables, often with unripe mango or papaya.
• Bouyon bred — A soup of fish and greens, related to the French bouillabaisse. Chinese cabbage is one of the greens used.
• Tec-tec soup — A soup of *tec-tec*, small clams, originally served to workers and still a popular dish.

Plantain, breadfruit and coconut

• Ladob — Ripe plantain and sweet potato, sometimes cassava or breadfruit, simmered in coconut milk with sugar, nutmeg and a vanilla pod until the sauce is creamy. It is eaten as a dessert, or as a savoury dish with salted fish and salt in place of sugar. The first arrivals on the islands ate it in large amounts because plantain, cassava and breadfruit were plentiful, and it can be served hot or cold.
• Kat-kat banane — Green bananas and fish cooked together in coconut milk. Seychelles grows at least 23 kinds of banana, and they are also fried with sugar and butter, flambéed or made into chips.
• Breadfruit — Boiled, baked, mashed, fried or cooked as a dessert in coconut milk. The traditional way is to roast it whole in the embers, surrounded by coconut husks, for about 45 minutes, then crack it open. Breadfruit chips are a common snack.
• Salad palmis — Palm heart salad, made with the heart of the coconut palm, also called millionaire's salad. A version mixes the palm heart with fish, rice and sweet potato.

Drinks, snacks and markets

To drink, there is coconut water and fresh juice, *kalou* (palm wine), *bakka* (a local rum) and beers brewed on the islands such as Seybrew and Eku. Snacks sold in corner stores include banana chips, breadfruit chips and *molouk*, fried bread dough. Fresh fish and fruit are sold by street vendors and at the market in Victoria, and grilled fish is cooked every Wednesday evening at the Bazar Labrin in Beau Vallon on Mahé. Victoria is also home to one of the largest tuna canneries in the world. For a sit-down Creole meal, Marie Antoinette, in an old Creole house in Victoria, has served a fixed menu of small traditional dishes since 1972.

Cook Seychellois food at home

Seychelles has no official national dish, but cari coco and grilled fish are the two answers Seychellois give most often; see the national dish of Seychelles. Copper has full recipes for cari coco, grilled fish and ladob, with ingredients and step-by-step methods, on our page about the food of Seychelles, alongside other East African recipes.

Mauritius shares the Creole base of rice, curry, rougaille and salt fish, but leans more Indian. Compare with the traditional food of Mauritius and the traditional food of Comoros.

The recipes

• Cari coco🇸🇨 Seychelles · 1 hour
• Grilled fish🇸🇨 Seychelles · 1 hour and 45 minutes
• Ladob🇸🇨 Seychelles · 45 minutes

Questions people ask

Keep reading

• What is the national dish of Seychelles?
• Traditional food of Burundi: 11 dishes to know
• Traditional food of Comoros: 13 dishes to know
• Traditional food of Djibouti: 13 dishes to know
• Traditional food of Eritrea: 13 dishes to know
• Traditional food of Ethiopia: 13 dishes to know

Sources

1. Seychellois cuisine — Wikipedia
2. Cuisine des Seychelles — Wikipédia (fr)
3. Traditional Seychelles Creole Food: A Local's Guide — Finding the Universe
4. Ladob — Wikipedia

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