What to eat in Sri Lanka, and where

So this is what to order, where the cooking actually changes, and how to arrange a trip so that you eat the real thing most days rather than twice.

Rice and curry is a format, not a dish

The first thing to understand is that “rice and curry” is a structure. Rice in the middle, and around it three to a dozen small dishes: a dhal, a fish or chicken curry, two or three vegetables cooked quite differently from each other, a mallung of shredded greens with coconut, a coconut sambol, a papadam, a pickle.

You take a little of each, mix on your plate, and the point is the combination rather than any single bowl. A good one has heat, sourness from goraka or tamarind, sweetness from coconut milk and a crunch, all in the same mouthful. It costs three to six dollars at a local place and it will be better than a twenty-five dollar version at a resort.

The best one you eat will be in a family home or a small roadside place. We build both into itineraries, and the home lunch inland is consistently the meal people mention in their debriefs a year later.

The words that will let you order well

Hoppers, or appa. Bowl-shaped fermented rice and coconut pancakes, crisp at the edge and soft in the middle, cooked in a small round pan. Usually breakfast or late evening rather than lunch. Order one with an egg cracked into the middle, and eat it with lunu miris, a fierce onion and chilli sambol.

String hoppers, or idiyappam. Steamed nests of rice noodle, eaten with dhal, a thin curry and coconut sambol. The other national breakfast.

Kottu roti. Chopped godamba roti stir-fried on a griddle with egg, vegetables and meat, to a rhythm made by two metal blades. You find it after dark by the sound. It is the best late food in the country and it is not subtle.

Ambul thiyal. The sour dry fish curry of the south, blackened with goraka, dense and intense, eaten in small amounts. The single most distinctive dish on the island.

Pol sambol. Grated coconut, chilli, lime and Maldive fish. It goes with everything and it is on every table.

Lamprais. Rice, meat, a fried egg, sambol and a frikkadel meatball, baked together in a banana leaf. A Colombo Dutch Burgher speciality and a complete meal in a parcel.

Kiribath. Milk rice, cut into diamonds, eaten at new moon and celebrations with sambol or jaggery.

Curd and kithul treacle. Buffalo curd in a clay pot with palm treacle poured over it. The correct end to a meal, and the correct thing to buy from the roadside stands in the hills.

Short eats. The bakery counter of fried and baked snacks: fish buns, cutlets, patties, rolls. Two dollars and lunch is solved.

Where the cooking changes

Jaffna and the north. Tamil cooking, hotter than the south, with its own curry powder and a heavier hand with black pepper and roasted spice. The crab curry is worth the drive north on its own, and odiyal kool, a thick seafood and palmyra soup, is the regional dish people never see because it is rarely on a tourist menu. Ask, and it appears.

The east coast. Muslim and Tamil influences, biryani that is genuinely good, and the freshest fish on the island because the fleet is right there.

The hill country. Cooler, more vegetable-led, plenty of Indian Tamil influence in the tea estate communities. Also where you eat the best fresh curd, and where a plain vegetable rice and curry can be extraordinary.

Colombo. Everything, plus the Dutch Burgher tradition, plus a genuinely good modern restaurant scene that has grown fast in the last decade. The Pettah market and its surrounding streets are the eating half of a Colombo day.

The south coast. Fish, ambul thiyal, and, in season, the best hopper stands in the country because the tourist trade keeps them open late.

How to eat well on a Sri Lanka trip

1. Eat outside the hotel at least every other night. This is the single change that transforms the food on a Sri Lanka trip, and it is mostly a matter of asking your driver where he would eat rather than where he thinks you want to eat.
2. Arrange one home lunch. We set these up with families we know. It costs very little and it is the best meal of most trips.
3. Eat breakfast locally once or twice. Hotel breakfast in Sri Lanka is usually an international buffet with hoppers as a token. A hopper stand at seven in the morning is a different thing.
4. Say your heat preference at the start. Sri Lankan food is genuinely hot by default, hotter than most Indian regional cooking, and kitchens will adjust without complaint.
5. Buy from the roadside. King coconut for the water, corn on the cob in the hills, curd and treacle, cashews at the Kurunegala stands, wood apple juice if you are curious.
6. Do not skip the buffalo curd because it looks like yoghurt. It is not yoghurt and it is much better.

What is overrated

The hotel buffet. Said twice, deliberately. It is the least interesting food on the island and it is what most visitors eat twice a day for two weeks.

Cinnamon and spice garden tours. These are commission stops on the Kandy road, usually ending at a shop selling ayurvedic oils at four times the price. Our drivers are paid a proper day rate so they are not steering you into them, and if you actively want a spice garden we will take you to a working plantation rather than a demonstration.

Anything described as a cooking demonstration in a hotel. A real class in a home kitchen is one of the best half days in Sri Lanka. A demonstration by a hotel chef for twenty people is not that.

Ceylon tea as a shopping experience. The tea is excellent and the factory tour is worth an hour. The purchase is best made at a proper tea shop in Colombo or at the estate itself rather than at the place that pays a commission.

Vegetarians, vegans and allergies

Vegetarians eat very well here, because a standard rice and curry is mostly vegetable anyway. You are not asking a kitchen to invent anything.

Vegans need one specific piece of vigilance: Maldive fish. It is a dried, flaked seasoning that goes into sambols and vegetable dishes where you would not think to look for it, and it is not considered meat by many cooks. Tell us and we brief the kitchens in writing. Coconut milk does the work dairy does elsewhere, so once the Maldive fish question is handled, vegan travel here is easier than in most of Asia.

Nuts and shellfish. Cashew is common in vegetable curries and prawn appears in stocks. Same rule: tell us at the first conversation, not the final email, and we put it in writing in Sinhala and Tamil.

Alcohol. Not sold on poya days, which is every full moon, and some restaurants stop serving. Your itinerary flags the dates.

Plan this trip

Tell us how you like to eat and we will build the route around it, including the home lunch and the market morning. Free, and with no obligation.

Start planning

Keep reading

• Sri Lanka: the complete guide to planning your trip
• Sri Lanka for the first time: what we would tell you first
• The best two-week route through Sri Lanka
• What we would skip in Sri Lanka
• Sri Lanka by food and culture, 13 days
• Sri Lanka, planned around the monsoon that actually matters

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