Del Place, Seychelles: Mahe’s Best Restaurant?
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Del Place, Seychelles Best Restaurant?
Del Place Restaurant spins everything Seychelles offers under one roof: vibes, views, booze and a disjointed food menu. Yet, I would return.
Del Place Restaurant, Port Launay Road, N.Y.S. Village, Mahe Island, Seychelles. All information is true as of publication. You can find the latest information on Del Place Restaurant's Website or call them on +2482814111.
Del Place Restaurants, starters: SCR150-460, mains: SCR-330-1950, desserts SCR95-290.
Written by Liam Collens // See more food reviews here.
The Highs
The Lows
The Highs
The Lows
Del Place lies at the heart of Seychelles best location
Seychelles reminds me of home. Canopies of lush tropical vegetation where the sun creeps slowly peaking between glossy, verdant leaves. A scattered rash of tiny islands jewelling the Indian Ocean.
Mrs EatGoSee and I sit in splendid silence in the car pootling through Mahe’s hills towards Del Place. Guiding a car around Mahe Island tells you a lot. The intimacy of daily life unfolds. Villages teeming with barefoot children with plastered smiles running to the corner shops. An ageing hut with a simple galvanised roof dangles on a hillside; its walls papered with Seybrew posters, the Seychelles local beer. Children run hurriedly, giddy to buy local soft drinks. Years later, the Seybrew posters may also become interesting to them.
Seychelles features little corner stores serving local products; A well-behaved beach dog outside Del Place Restaurant
Touring around Mahe Island ingratiates us with locals selling coconuts from tired trucks pared on nameless beaches. We play with lively feral dogs. Beaches in Seychelles are everywhere, and yet, each one reveals itself to you as a personal secret. I lazily watch mahogany-lacquered, muscular fishermen clutch armfuls of fresh catch from the Indian Ocean.
We watch these fishermen from Del Place’s panoramic view across the shallow, teal Anse L’Islette. A bottle of chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc lays in a bucket of crushed ice as we sit in a quiet stupor drawing in the last moments of our time in Seychelles, committing them to memory.
Del Place pitches itself towards discerning Seychelles tourists. A live jazz drummer and bassist churn out familiar tunes. Oversized Aperol Spritz goblets appear on a bleached Ibiza-white bar groaning with those signature orange Veuve Clicquot ice buckets.
Del Place Restaurant Seychelles taken from Teresa Island, which sits in front of in front Del Place Restaurant.
Mrs EatGoSee and I sit in splendid silence in the car pootling through Mahe’s hills towards Del Place. Guiding a car around Mahe Island tells you a lot. The intimacy of daily life unfolds. Villages teeming with barefoot children with plastered smiles running to the corner shops. An ageing hut with a simple galvanised roof dangles on a hillside; its walls papered with Seybrew posters, the Seychelles local beer. Children run hurriedly, giddy to buy local soft drinks. Years later, the Seybrew posters may also become interesting to them.
Seychelles features little corner stores serving local products; A well-behaved beach dog outside Del Place Restaurant
Touring around Mahe Island ingratiates us with locals selling coconuts from tired trucks pared on nameless beaches. We play with lively feral dogs. Beaches in Seychelles are everywhere, and yet, each one reveals itself to you as a personal secret. I lazily watch mahogany-lacquered, muscular fishermen clutch armfuls of fresh catch from the Indian Ocean.
We watch these fishermen from Del Place’s panoramic view across the shallow, teal Anse L’Islette. A bottle of chilled New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc lays in a bucket of crushed ice as we sit in a quiet stupor drawing in the last moments of our time in Seychelles, committing them to memory.
Del Place pitches itself towards discerning Seychelles tourists. A live jazz drummer and bassist churn out familiar tunes. Oversized Aperol Spritz goblets appear on a bleached Ibiza-white bar groaning with those signature orange Veuve Clicquot ice buckets.
Del Place Restaurant Seychelles taken from Teresa Island, which sits in front of in front Del Place Restaurant.
Del Place’s is more an experience than a food destination
Del Place is an experience. The trendy maître d’ glides between tables topping up wine, procuring drinks and wielding small chat like a Jedi knight. There is an island sophistication to Del Place that I admire. It feels local but knows its clientele really wants international and bends accordingly.
You could spend hours on this patio depleting wine bottles and mojitos in search of a personal best. Eventually, the lure of food will call you. Here is where a not-so-insignificant asterix sketches in. Del Place charms like newfound love yet, like any early days’ relationship, the honeymoon fades and you start seeing your new lover’s grating habits.
You could spend hours on this patio depleting wine bottles and mojitos in search of a personal best. Eventually, the lure of food will call you. Here is where a not-so-insignificant asterix sketches in. Del Place charms like newfound love yet, like any early days’ relationship, the honeymoon fades and you start seeing your new lover’s grating habits.
Del Place charms like newfound love yet, like any early days' relationship, the honeymoon fades and you start seeing your new lover’s grating habits.
Del Place’s menu and food could work through some things
Del Place’s menu is more consistent than other restaurants visited in Seychelles. A tidy menu with starters, soups, salads, sizeable mains, pasta and desserts to lure in punters. Every line starts with French, an official language in Seychelles, but there is a low-key pomposity about Del Place that assures me French would appear anyway. But do people come to Del Place for the food? Fellow travellers whispered varied feedback about Del Place before I arrived. Many lauded the overall experience while one commented that the food is unremarkable. Here, on this sun-drenched veranda swilling Mai Tais and munching puzzlingly tough croquettes, lies the truth.
Most people will enjoy the food at Del Place, but more discerning crowds may furrow their eyebrows. Our modestly titled “VIP Board to Share” includes a prawn tempura whose batter is more Samurai do-moru armour than shatteringly crisp (SCR350). The tuna and sweet potato croquettes are stodgy dense pellets miles away from pillowy classic croquettes.
VIP Board, a Del Place starter, includes tempura prawns as well as tuna and sweet potato croquettes (SCR350)
We press on with the seafood platter one (SCR890) and carpaccio of ‘ultra fresh’ tuna (their words, SCR280) with sweet potato fries (SCR50). Mrs EatGoSee pulls gossamer sheets of carpaccio scattered with fresh passion fruit, watercress and pickled ginger. It is not my thing, but she enjoys it. That is all that matters. My seafood platter lays forth a selection of Del Place’s mixed achievements. A surfeit of prehistorically-large prawns, bright calamari rings, slabs of red snapper and mussel bivalves arrive with a side dish of white rice. There is enough protein here to make Dwayne Johson buckle. The seafood platter’s mariniere sauce is plate-lickingly good and thicc with two c’s. A generous ladle may reduce the (increasing) fine lines around my eyes. Here’s to hoping. Yet the mariniere begs you to love it and overlook shrimp wooden with rigor mortis and rubbery, once clearly frozen mussels. Textures aside, it is a tasty dish but a small sigh escapes as the dish is US$60. I also cannot help but wonder why imported frozen mussels are used when I am sitting inches away from the sea. Is there nothing else local deserving of this blanket of good mariniere?
‘Ultra-fresh’ Tuna Carpaccio with Passion Fruit sauce (SCR280); Seafood Platter for one with prawns, calamari, red snapper and mussels (SCR890)
Remarkably, yes. Seychelles is not a place for food enthusiasts. Point blank. If any capable chefs are reading and looking to break a market, I have an island for you.Contact me at the usual place.
Del Place leans on location, brisk cocktails and a view that takes a thousand breaths away. A restaurant is a business where you purchase food prepared by others in exchange for money. Oh and someone else does the washing up, lovely. Del Place meets that definition but its best moments skirt that exchange.
Yet Seychelles is for honeymooners, romance and one-in-a-lifetime moments. The dining room is occupied with doles of cooing couples preening themselves for Instagram. No one is really here to eat, not really. A pre-COVID-like joie de vivre fills a hole left in many of us after over a year of closed spaces, isolation and melancholy.
Overall I am glad to be in Del Place; I am just disappointed I did not eat something memorable (for the right reasons). Del Place reminds you how good it is to be alive in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Just order a bottle of champagne with those nearest to you, watch the sun set and enjoy the memory.
Views from Del Place Restaurant’s veranda area adjacent to the very smart bar
Tourists looking to spend some money. View hunters looking for idyllic settings in a place spoiled for choice. Discerning drinkers that want the good stuff beyond the hotel bar.
View from Del Place Restaurant overlooking pirogues in the Indian Ocean around Seychelles
Most people will enjoy the food at Del Place, but more discerning crowds may furrow their eyebrows. Our modestly titled “VIP Board to Share” includes a prawn tempura whose batter is more Samurai do-moru armour than shatteringly crisp (SCR350). The tuna and sweet potato croquettes are stodgy dense pellets miles away from pillowy classic croquettes.
VIP Board, a Del Place starter, includes tempura prawns as well as tuna and sweet potato croquettes (SCR350)
We press on with the seafood platter one (SCR890) and carpaccio of ‘ultra fresh’ tuna (their words, SCR280) with sweet potato fries (SCR50). Mrs EatGoSee pulls gossamer sheets of carpaccio scattered with fresh passion fruit, watercress and pickled ginger. It is not my thing, but she enjoys it. That is all that matters. My seafood platter lays forth a selection of Del Place’s mixed achievements. A surfeit of prehistorically-large prawns, bright calamari rings, slabs of red snapper and mussel bivalves arrive with a side dish of white rice. There is enough protein here to make Dwayne Johson buckle. The seafood platter’s mariniere sauce is plate-lickingly good and thicc with two c’s. A generous ladle may reduce the (increasing) fine lines around my eyes. Here’s to hoping. Yet the mariniere begs you to love it and overlook shrimp wooden with rigor mortis and rubbery, once clearly frozen mussels. Textures aside, it is a tasty dish but a small sigh escapes as the dish is US$60. I also cannot help but wonder why imported frozen mussels are used when I am sitting inches away from the sea. Is there nothing else local deserving of this blanket of good mariniere?
‘Ultra-fresh’ Tuna Carpaccio with Passion Fruit sauce (SCR280); Seafood Platter for one with prawns, calamari, red snapper and mussels (SCR890)
Del Place Restaurant, Would I Return?
Remarkably, yes. Seychelles is not a place for food enthusiasts. Point blank. If any capable chefs are reading and looking to break a market, I have an island for you.Contact me at the usual place.
Del Place leans on location, brisk cocktails and a view that takes a thousand breaths away. A restaurant is a business where you purchase food prepared by others in exchange for money. Oh and someone else does the washing up, lovely. Del Place meets that definition but its best moments skirt that exchange.
Yet Seychelles is for honeymooners, romance and one-in-a-lifetime moments. The dining room is occupied with doles of cooing couples preening themselves for Instagram. No one is really here to eat, not really. A pre-COVID-like joie de vivre fills a hole left in many of us after over a year of closed spaces, isolation and melancholy.
Overall I am glad to be in Del Place; I am just disappointed I did not eat something memorable (for the right reasons). Del Place reminds you how good it is to be alive in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Just order a bottle of champagne with those nearest to you, watch the sun set and enjoy the memory.
Views from Del Place Restaurant’s veranda area adjacent to the very smart bar
Who Should Go To Del Place?
Tourists looking to spend some money. View hunters looking for idyllic settings in a place spoiled for choice. Discerning drinkers that want the good stuff beyond the hotel bar.
View from Del Place Restaurant overlooking pirogues in the Indian Ocean around Seychelles
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