Sri Lankan Food Guide

A cuisine of rice, coconut and spice

Sri Lankan food is built around rice and curry — a plate of rice served with several small curries of vegetables, lentils (parippu), fish or meat, plus sambols and pickles. Coconut milk, freshly grated coconut and spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, pepper, curry leaves and pandan give it its character. Sri Lanka is the original home of true cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum), still grown along the south-west coast.

Dishes to know

• Hoppers (appa) — bowl-shaped pancakes of fermented rice flour and coconut milk, often with an egg cooked in the middle; eaten in the morning or evening.
• String hoppers (indiappa) — steamed nests of rice-flour noodles, served with dhal and coconut sambol.
• Kottu roti — chopped flatbread stir-fried on a hot griddle with vegetables, egg or meat; listen for the rhythmic clatter of the blades in the evening.
• Pol sambol — fresh coconut with chilli, onion and lime: the island’s everyday relish.
• Kiribath — milk rice for auspicious mornings and the New Year, eaten with lunu miris (chilli-onion paste).
• Lamprais — a Dutch Burgher speciality: rice, curries and frikkadels baked together in a banana leaf.
• Ambul thiyal — the south’s sour fish curry, cooked dry with goraka.
• Jaffna crab curry and odiyal kool — the bold flavours of the Tamil north.
• Sweets — kavum and kokis at the New Year, watalappan (a jaggery and coconut custard), and buffalo curd with kithul treacle in the south.

Tea country

Tea has been grown in Sri Lanka since the 19th century, after a coffee-leaf disease destroyed the island’s coffee estates. Today “Ceylon tea” from regions such as Nuwara Eliya, Dimbula, Uva and Kandy is famous worldwide — and many estates in the hill country welcome visitors to their factories.

Good to know

• Spice levels can be high; it is fine to ask for “less spicy”.
• Many people eat with the right hand; cutlery is always available.
• Vegetarian food is easy to find, especially in Tamil and Buddhist areas.
• On full-moon Poya days alcohol and meat are not sold.