Hotel buffets are the worst way to eat in Sri Lanka. The real food is on plastic tables in shops with no signs. Here is what to order.
Breakfast
- Egg hoppers — a bowl-shaped rice-flour crepe with an egg cracked into the middle. Order two, plus a coconut sambol and a dhal.
- String hoppers with kiri hodi (mild coconut gravy) and pol sambol. A pillar of the island's breakfast.
- Kiribath — coconut-milk rice cut into diamonds, eaten with lunu miris (a fiery onion sambol). Sunday morning classic.
Lunch
- Rice and curry — never one curry. A proper plate is rice with 5–7 sides: dhal, a fish or chicken curry, jackfruit, gotu kola, brinjal moju, mallung.
- Lamprais — a Dutch-Burgher legacy dish: rice, meat curry, blachan and cutlets baked together in a banana leaf.
Snacks & street
- Kottu roti — shredded godhamba roti chopped on a hot plate with egg, veg and meat. Listen for the rhythmic chopping outside restaurants after 6 p.m.
- Isso wade — a lentil fritter with a whole prawn on top. Galle Face at sunset is the classic setting.
- Achcharu — pickled green fruit sold from bicycles.
Dinner & regional
- Jaffna crab curry — the northern kingdom's signature. Fiery, gingery, unforgettable.
- Ambul thiyal — sour tuna curry from the south, cooked with goraka until the sauce is almost dry.
- Polos curry — young jackfruit slow-cooked into a texture very close to pulled pork.
Drinks & sweet
- King coconut (thambili) — the orange one. Any roadside vendor with a machete.
- Watalappan — Malay-origin coconut and jaggery custard. The correct way to end a meal.