Dreams of sourdough: Sri Lanka: Food and supermarkets

I always wanted to visit Sri Lanka - the civil war made it unsuitable to visit in 2008, and since then it has just been lurking at the back of my mind. All the Lankan food I've eaten, whether home made or in a restaurant, has always been delicious. So I was glad to finally have the opportunity to visit for a week.

Tourism in Sri Lanka is absolutely exploding at breakneck speed. Every place I went to was building guesthouses like crazy. Along with tourists is the development of the idea that tourists will pay anything even if it is absurd compared to local prices. There are plenty of hole-in-the-wall places to eat in Sri Lanka (except in Galle Fort, that is just Disneyland), but most tourists do not venture into them. Tourists prefer cleanliness, menus and cutlery - hence the tourist restaurants are all very overpriced.

Rice and Curry

The mainstay of Lankan food is "rice and curry", which really doesn't describe anything. A mound of rice comes with any number of curries (usually 3 or 4) that reflect what is fresh and in season. There is always dal, often coconut sambol, and then vegetables.

The very first rice & curry outside Fort railway station. Delicious okra and eggplant. This delicious lunch set the bar incredibly high as I had no idea none of my future meals would be so cheap (120R = $1)!

One of the best - at Matey Hut in Ella. Top left is a whole cooked mango! At this restaurant the levels of spicy are - not spicy, Western spicy, Asian spicy, Lankan spicy.

Another fine example from Ella - sweet eggplant, beetroot and jackfruit seeds

A tourist restaurant standard "banquet' with lots of little curries - this one is from Mama's restaurant in Galle Fort.

Kottu Roti

Another popular food / snack is the kottu roti. Here the roti - thin doughy pancakes - are added to a sizzling hotplate along with chopped veggies (usually onions, leeks, cabbage and carrot) and an egg. I often saw cheese on tourist menus but I wonder how authentic that must be.

As the whole lot is frying, the kottu man uses two giant choppers to slice everything up very finely - like a fried rice but fried roti. The rhythmic clatter of the choppers on the hotplate is what alerts you to a kottu place - there is no sound like it in the world!

My first kottu roti from a roadside restaurant in Mirissa

String hoppers

I actually didn't see string hoppers all that much, the only time I had it in Lanka was this lunch in Nuwara Eliya, ladled over with a glug of yellow curry sauce and a plop of the ubiquitous coconut sambol. The jackfruit cutlet in the corner is one of the tastiest things I ate in Lanka.

So spicy, so tender, so delicious. Immediately ate another two.

Breakfast

I'm not really sure what Lankans eat for breakfast, but there were plenty of bakeries where people bought (mostly very white) bread and sweets. I found most sweet things way too sweet for my liking - obviously the locals have a way sweeter tooth!

Here is a typical breakfast - all fried, delicious and unhealthy. A fish roll and a cutlet of egg and mystery bits.

Egg roti from Dewmini roti shop in Mirissa - super famous but somewhat bland.

Thosa - spelt like dosa, but nothing like dosa. It is also a fermented rice crepe but it is made more like an uttapam. Served with the very Lankan coconut sambol and very "Indian" sambhar, almost like a subcontinental fusion food!