Sri Lankan Food: 20 Dishes to Try and Where to Eat Them

Sri Lankan food is one of the most underrated cuisines in Asia. It shares roots with South Indian cooking but has its own character: coconut in almost everything, a love of sour and spicy flavours, roasted curry powders, abundant seafood, and influences from Malay, Dutch, Portuguese and Arab traders. Here's what to eat.

The everyday meal: rice and curry

Rice and curry is the national meal — a plate of rice surrounded by several small curries: dhal (lentils), a meat or fish curry, and vegetable curries such as jackfruit, beetroot, green beans or pumpkin, plus sambols and a crunchy papadam. Lunchtime is the main rice-and-curry meal. Small local restaurants ("hotels") serve it cheaply; guesthouse home-cooked versions are often the best you'll eat.

Dishes to try

1. Hoppers (appa) — bowl-shaped crispy pancakes made from fermented rice flour and coconut milk. Order an egg hopper, with an egg cooked into the base, and eat it with lunu miris (a fiery onion-chilli relish).
2. String hoppers (idiyappam) — nests of steamed rice noodles served with curry and pol sambol for breakfast or dinner.
3. Kottu roti — chopped roti stir-fried on a griddle with vegetables, egg and meat, accompanied by the rhythmic clanging of metal blades. The soundtrack of Sri Lankan evenings.
4. Pol sambol — freshly grated coconut with chilli, onion and lime. It goes with everything.
5. Dhal curry (parippu) — creamy coconut lentils, on every rice and curry plate.
6. Lamprais — a Dutch Burgher dish of rice, meat curry, frikkadels (meatballs) and sambols baked in a banana leaf. Best in Colombo.
7. Fish ambul thiyal — a sour, dry fish curry from the south, made with goraka (a souring fruit).
8. Jaffna crab curry — rich, dark and very spicy; the signature dish of the north. See our Jaffna guide.
9. Kiribath — coconut milk rice cut into diamonds, eaten on special occasions and New Year with lunu miris.
10. Jackfruit curry (polos) — young jackfruit cooked until tender and meaty.
11. Gotu kola sambol — a fresh salad of pennywort leaves, coconut and lime.
12. Devilled dishes — stir-fried chicken, prawns or cuttlefish with peppers and a sweet-hot sauce, popular with a beer.
13. Isso vadai — lentil fritters topped with whole prawns, sold at Galle Face Green in Colombo.
14. Short eats — the trays of samosas, rolls, patties and cutlets on every bakery counter.
15. Roti — coconut roti with sambol, or folded roti filled with egg and vegetables.
16. Thosai and vadai — South Indian-style breakfasts, especially in the north and east.
17. Wattalapam — a spiced coconut and jaggery custard of Malay origin.
18. Curd and treacle — buffalo curd with kithul palm treacle; look for it on roadsides between Tissamaharama and the south coast.
19. King coconut (thambili) — the orange coconut sold at roadside stalls; the best cure for heat.
20. Ceylon tea — of course. Visit a factory in Nuwara Eliya or Ella and taste the difference between high-grown and low-grown teas.

How spicy is it?

Sri Lankan food can be very hot. Restaurants serving travellers often tone it down; if you want the real thing, ask for "Sri Lankan spicy". If you can't handle heat, ask for "less chilli" and lean on dhal, coconut sambols and rice to cool things down.

Eating etiquette

• Many Sri Lankans eat with the right hand, mixing rice and curry with their fingertips. Try it — food genuinely tastes different. Use your right hand only.
• Lunch is the main meal; many small restaurants run out of rice and curry by mid-afternoon.
• Tap water isn't generally safe to drink; use bottled or filtered water. Refill stations are becoming more common.
• Vegetarians are well catered for — many curries are vegetable-based.

Where to eat

• Local "hotels" (small eateries) for cheap rice and curry and short eats.
• Guesthouses for home-cooked meals; ask in the morning for a rice-and-curry dinner.
• Colombo for the best restaurants, including modern Sri Lankan cooking and the old Dutch Burgher dishes.
• Cooking classes in Ella, Kandy and the south coast — a great way to learn the spices.