Rice and curry, hoppers, kottu, seafood: how to eat well across the island.
Sri Lankan food is one of the great cuisines of Asia — and, still, one of the least well known. It shares roots with South Indian cooking but has its own distinct grammar of coconut, curry leaves, pandan, cinnamon and a fierce use of chilli and Maldive fish. Understood well, it is one of the most sensual reasons to visit the island.
The defining meal is rice and curry — a plate of rice served with five or six vegetable, meat or fish curries, plus sambols, pickles and papadums. It is not a single dish but a whole ecosystem of flavours, each intricately spiced, meant to be mixed at the table with the fingers. The best rice and curry in Sri Lanka is usually eaten at home, and where we can, we arrange a private village lunch as part of an itinerary.
Breakfast belongs to hoppers — bowl-shaped pancakes of fermented rice and coconut milk, cooked to order in a small wok. Ordered plain, with egg, or with a fiery seeni sambol on the side, they are the great morning ritual of the island. Kottu — chopped roti stir-fried with vegetables and meat, hammered rhythmically on a griddle — is the great night-time street food; hear it before you see it.
On the coast, seafood is exceptional and simply cooked: prawns and crab curries in Negombo, tuna sashimi in Mirissa, cinnamon-smoked fish in Kalpitiya. In the hills, the food shifts towards gentler curries and the excellent produce of the highland gardens. Our itineraries build in one or two stand-out meals — a chef-led tasting menu in Colombo, a barefoot beach dinner in Tangalle, a family-run rice-and-curry lunch in the hills — as anchors around which the rest of the eating happens naturally.