Food and drink
Eat like you live here
Sri Lankan food is generous, fiery and cheap to eat well. The best of it is not in hotel buffets. It is on a lunch table crowded with small curries, at a kottu counter after dark, at a roadside stall with a pile of king coconuts. Here is what to order.
Rice and curry, done right
Rice and curry is not one dish, it is a spread. Expect five or six vegetable curries, perhaps jackfruit, beetroot, dhal and beans, alongside a fish or chicken curry, coconut sambol and a papadam or two on top. Lunch is the big meal in Sri Lanka, so eat it at midday the way locals do, and pick the place with the queue.
Short eats and street food
Kottu is the sound of the island at night: chopped roti, vegetables and egg clattering on a hot griddle. For breakfast, order egg hoppers with lunu miris, a sharp relish of onion, chilli and lime. And on an evening walk along the Galle Face sea wall in Colombo, do what everyone around you is doing and buy isso vadei, a crisp lentil fritter pressed with prawns.
Crab, prawns and the coast
Plan one meal around Negombo lagoon crab, cooked slowly in a dark, peppery curry. On the south coast, devilled prawns arrive hot, sweet and sharp on one plate. The rule everywhere is simple. Ask what came in that morning, and order that.
Tea, arrack and king coconut
Ceylon tea tastes best where it grows, hot and strong, with the estate rows above Nuwara Eliya or Ella in view. Coconut arrack, distilled from palm sap, is the local spirit. Take it slowly, with ginger beer and ice. And in the heat of the afternoon, stop at a roadside stall for a thambili, a king coconut cut open in front of you. It costs less than a soft drink and works better.
One last thing. Our drivers and guides eat at these places themselves, so ask them where to stop. No restaurant on our routes pays us a commission. When we point you somewhere, it is because the food is good.
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