Hunting down fruit bat curry in Seychelles

Fruit bat curry is a real Seychellois dish, an old Creole one, and somewhere on the trip it became the thing I most wanted to eat. Not because it sounded delicious, but because it sounded like a meal you only get the chance to try in one place on earth.

It turned out to be harder to find than I expected. I asked at restaurant after restaurant on La Digue, and for two days the answer was the same: not today, not here, we do not have it. Nobody was surprised that I wanted it, they just never had it on. Eventually a couple of locals pointed me to a small place on the edge of the village that sometimes did. I went. It was on the menu. They had run out that night.

So I came back the next evening, and before the menu even reached the table I knew what I was ordering. This time they had it. The portion was enormous, far too much for one person, and my wife wanted nothing to do with it, which I had expected. They brought her a salad on the house to make up for it.

And the bat itself? It tastes a bit like chicken, honestly, just darker and chewier, cooked down slow in a thick Creole curry. I have a stomach that does not forgive everything, so I ate about half and stopped while I was ahead. But it was genuinely good, and I would have kept going. Another bucket-list plate, crossed off.

You do not have to chase a fruit bat across an island to eat well in Seychelles. But if you like the idea of a meal you cannot get at home, this is the one to ask around for. Persistence is most of the recipe.