Regional highlights
Cari poulet
Chicken curry Réunionnais-style — the everyday expression of the cari method that defines the island's cooking: chicken on the bone, seared in oil until golden, then braised with onion, garlic, ginger, tomato, turmeric, cumin and fresh thyme until the sauce is dense and fragrant, reduced almost dry so the fat separates and the aromatics form a concentrated crust on the meat. Served with white rice, grains (red kidney beans in coconut milk), rougail de tomates (fresh tomato-chilli relish) and brèdes (sautéed leafy greens). The complete Réunionnais Sunday meal. Each family has its own masala proportions — turmeric is always the dominant spice, giving the sauce its vivid yellow-ochre colour.
Rougail saucisses
The most iconic and beloved Réunionnais dish beyond the island's own borders: smoked pork sausages, slashed to the bone, cooked directly in a thick sauce of crushed tomatoes, onion, garlic, ginger, green chilli and fresh thyme until the tomato completely breaks down and the sausage fat enriches the sauce. Unlike a cari, rougail uses no turmeric — it is purely a tomato-and-aromatics preparation. Eaten with mountains of white rice and grains (beans in coconut milk). The saucisses fumées of Réunion are made locally, lightly smoked over sugarcane bagasse, giving them a distinctive sweetness. Also made with merguez or salted meat on weekdays.
Bouchons
Réunion's beloved Chinese-Creole steamed dumplings — the local name for what is recognisably a Hakka-style dim sum: balls of seasoned minced pork (sometimes chicken or a pork-shrimp mix), flavoured with soy sauce, garlic, ginger and Chinese five spice, enclosed in a thin wheat dough wrapper and steamed in a bamboo or metal steamer until just set. Served with a dipping sauce of soy, vinegar, green chilli and ginger. Sold at every Chinese-Réunionnais restaurant and market stall; eaten as a starter, a snack or takeaway street food. The adaptation of Hakka baozi to Réunionnais conditions has produced a dumpling slightly smaller and denser than the mainland Chinese original.
Grains
The essential accompaniment to every Réunionnais cari or rougail: red kidney beans (haricots rouges), slow-cooked in coconut milk with onion, garlic, thyme and salt until completely tender and the coconut milk has reduced to a thick, sweet sauce. 'Grains' is the generic Réunionnais Creole term for any legume prepared this way — also made with lentils (lentilles de Cilaos, grown in the island's volcanic highlands), white beans or chickpeas. The coconut milk version (with red beans) is most common and most beloved. Never eaten alone; always served as a second starch alongside rice, providing the protein base when meat or fish is absent.
Brèdes
Sautéed leafy greens — the vegetable side dish of Réunionnais cooking, essential at every complete meal alongside rice and grains. The term brèdes covers multiple species: chouchou brèdes (chayote leaves), brèdes mafane (toothache plant, Acmella oleracea, which causes a tingling numbness on the tongue — unique to Réunion), brèdes morelle (nightshade leaves) and brèdes cresson (watercress). Each is sautéed in oil with garlic, onion and a small amount of chilli until wilted and fragrant. Brèdes mafane in particular is a Réunionnais taste that has no equivalent elsewhere — the mouth-numbing effect is prized as a palate cleanser between spiced bites.
Cari cabri
Goat curry — the festive cari of Réunion, reserved for weddings, communal celebrations and special Sunday meals. Goat pieces on the bone are marinated with turmeric, cumin, garlic and ginger before being seared and slow-braised in the cari method. The longer cooking time needed for goat develops a richer, more complex sauce than the chicken version; the meat is gelatinous and pulls from the bone easily when properly cooked. The intensity of the spicing is higher than everyday cari poulet — more cumin, more ginger, more dried chilli — reflecting the festive register of the dish. Accompanied always by rice, grains and rougail.
Samoussas
Réunionnais samoussas are the local adaptation of the South Asian samosa — thin triangular filo-style pastry shells fried until shatteringly crisp, filled with a spiced mixture of minced chicken or beef with onion, green chilli and curry leaves, or a vegetable version with potato and pea. Smaller and more delicate than Indian samosas, they are a standard street food and starter across the island, sold at bus station kiosks, school canteens and market stalls. The Indian Tamil community brought the samosa technique; the Réunionnais version uses local spice blends and is typically lighter in pastry weight.
Cari requin
Shark curry — a controversial but traditional Réunionnais dish that predates the island's current shark safety concerns. Small reef shark (not endangered pelagic species) is cut into steaks, salted to remove excess moisture, then braised in the cari method with turmeric, ginger, tomato, onion and thyme. The texture of cooked shark is dense, meaty and drier than most fish; the strong flavour needs the concentrated cari sauce to balance it. Served with rice and rougail. Given Réunion's ongoing issues with bull shark attacks in coastal waters, cari requin now carries an additional cultural complexity — some local chefs continue to serve it as heritage, others have removed it from menus.