Rice and curry, hoppers and lagoon crab: the Sri Lankan table, the back story

About Rice and curry, hoppers and lagoon crab: the Sri Lankan table, the back story

By the ULTIMATE Sri Lanka Editorial Team

Sri Lankan food is one of Asia’s great undiscovered cuisines: coconut, chilli, curry leaf and spices, with influences from South India, the Malay world, the Arab traders and the Portuguese, Dutch and British.

Rice and curry

The everyday meal is rice with several curries: dhal, a fish or chicken curry, vegetables such as jackfruit or beetroot, a coconut sambol and crispy papadums. Each is small, and you mix them as you go.

Hoppers and string hoppers

Hoppers (appa) are bowl-shaped pancakes of fermented rice flour and coconut milk, crisp at the edges and soft in the middle; an egg hopper has an egg cooked in the base. String hoppers are nests of steamed rice noodles, eaten with curry and coconut sambol.

A Sri Lankan lunch is not one curry but many, each small dish a different flavour.

Kottu and lamprais

Kottu is chopped flatbread stir-fried on a griddle with vegetables, egg or meat; you will hear the rhythmic clatter of the blades before you see it. Lamprais, a Dutch Burgher dish, is rice and curries baked in a banana leaf.

Seafood

An island on the Indian Ocean eats a lot of fish. The lagoons around Negombo and the coasts are famous for crab and prawns, which Ministry of Crab in Colombo has made world famous.

Our advice: eat rice and curry at lunch, when it is freshest; ask for “less spicy” if you need to; and try hoppers in the evening, when they are made to order.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Rice and curry, hoppers and lagoon crab: the Sri Lankan table, the back story before you go.