Last Friday, we were having dinner at the Labourdonnais Hotel in Caudan. A veggie friend of mine was going through the agonizing exercise of choosing her food from the menu. It?s a bittersweet exercise if you?re a vegetarian because you?re so used to only having the choice between one vegetarian dish and nothing else that when you?re given a choice, you don?t quite know how to react. Or maybe it?s bad because we?re women. Go figure.

Anyhow, that?s why we like the Labourdonnais; the veggie menu is quite extensive. Or was, rather. So, I encourage my friend to have veggie noodles because they are quite tasty (so I can have some of her food). She hesitates because last time she had them, she had discovered to her absolute horror that they had come with a complimentary piece of chicken. To cut a long story short, she complained, they apologized and she forgave them because she likes having dinner there. (And because her friends like going there.)

So she ordered noodles off the vegetarian menu.

This time, they came with a tiny piece of crab leg. Or some other creature that used to live in the sea. She nearly had a heart attack. I was livid. We called on the waiter and shamefaced, he listened to our complaints and then disappeared in the kitchen.

Only to come out fifteen minutes later to apologize.

We didn?t care for his chef?s apologies. So we made a fuss and demanded to speak to the manager. ?He?s not here?, said our waiter. The chef? ?Gone?, was the unforthcoming reply. "Your boss?" we asked. ?I?m the only one here?, he said nastily. Find your boss, we said; we?ll wait. And so we waited. For an hour. The long wait was interrupted by someone they call an ?assistant chef?, who had nothing new to tell us, save that ?it won?t happen again.?That?s what you said last time, we said. "What if she was allergic to seafood?? I asked. He replied, ?How many times are you going to say this?? Before adding ?maybe when the pot was washed a piece of crab stuck to it.? I had to pinch myself to make sure I heard properly. I did. We pointed out that the Labourdonnais was one of the first hotels to qualify for the quality certification HACCP and that meant that at least twice procedure wasn?t followed.

That shut him up. But kept us waiting.

When we saw the manager, she said she wasn?t informed but thought the matter was "serious." So she took my friend?s number and promised to get back to her as soon as she had made enquiries.

That was three days ago. Obviously she agrees with her staff; they hadn?t deemed it appropriate to place on record a complaint of a very serious nature. She doesn?t follow up.

So be it. There?s just one thing we?re still debating. How exactly should we interpret Labourdonnais? message? - Is it that vegetarians are not wanted? Or it is rather, Mauritians not welcome?