When I boarded a Sri Lankan Airlines flight to Colombo from Trichy in February 2003, I had little idea about the food that awaited me. I presumed that the islanders would have a diet similar to that eaten in Tamil Nadu. Not having been educated by the Internet as one is today, there was very little someone living in Mumbai could have known about the island besides its cricketing prowess and charming accents, made popular by players and cricket commentators alike; there was, of course, the civil war.
As we drove from the Bandaranaike International Airport to Puttalam in the country’s North-Western province, I immediately felt like I was in some corner of Kerala, the land of my ancestors. I got my first taste of Sri Lankan cuisine within a few hours of landing in the country, in a resthouse meant for Sri Lankan Buddhist pilgrims. My host – and close friend – Prasad did not inform the management that he had a foreign citizen with him; he forbade me from speaking in English in the dining hall. Soon I was having my first Sri Lankan ‘thali,’ or ‘rice and curry set,’ as it is called on the island. Prasad asked me to observe him mix the food; a small portion of parippu (dal curry), pol sambhol (freshly grated coconuts, shallots, chilli powder, lime juice and salt), a chicken curry, cooked radish leaves and square pieces of papadum, fried in coconut oil. It wasn’t very different from the style of cooking in Kerala that I was familiar with. To avoid disclosing my ‘foreign’ identity, I had to break a piece of papadum, and then take a bit of everything and mix it with rice, before eating the mixture together.
The resthouse in Puttalam was extremely generous with its use of chillies. The concept of curd with rice seemed alien to Sinhalese cuisine. Relishing the meal but struggling with the piquancy, I had to cool my palate and tongue with jaggery and water. My first dinner made me a fan of Sri Lankan cuisine, but this was just an appetiser of what was to come on my first visit to the country.
The next morning, I had idiappa (string hoppers) with a parippu that was similar to the one I had eaten the previous night, along with katta sambhol, which differentiated itself from pol sambhol by the use of Maldive fish. As someone who never particularly enjoyed the Malayali variant of idiappa that we call nool-puttu or idiappam, which in my home was usually eaten with kadala (black gram) curry and coconut chutney, the Sri Lankan variant was a welcome change. The Sri Lankan parippu, made with masur dal and flavoured with coconut milk, is in my opinion, a far more delicious accompaniment to the string hoppers than the kadala curry, which I have grown to appreciate more with age.
The Sri Lankan rice and curry variants include one with a fish curry, cooked in pepper sauce and coconut milk, and one with a prawn curry. Red meats don’t form a big part of this particular meal. As Prasad and I travelled to Anuradhapura, I had a chance to taste aapa or hoppers. The Sri Lankan variant is a lot thinner and crispier than our Kerala variant, the aapam, and this has to do with the actual vessel used to make the dish. Aapams are a welcome breakfast treat at home in India, especially with potato stew, or ishtu as we call it. This is a dish that does not exist in this form in Sri Lanka, but the islanders do make a potato curry with coconut milk called ala-kiri-hodi, which, owing to turmeric, is yellow in colour. On my first night of tasting Sri Lankan aapa, I tried their variant with eggs, and was immediately won over.
As we left Anuradhapura for Dambulla and Kandy, I tried one of the island’s favourite street foods – kottu roti, a chopped flatbread mixed with eggs, chicken, vegetables, onions, and chillies. The whole process of making this dish produces an almost-addictive drumbeat. It is believed to have originated in the 1960s in eastern Sri Lanka and spread to Kerala from there, where it’s called the kottu parotta. Kottu has also evolved since my first trip to the island nation, and a popular variant now has cheese as an addition. (Kottu made at a chain of restaurants on Colombo’s Galle Road named De Pilawoos is something many Sri Lankans swear by.)
My first trip to the island culminated with a stay at Prasad’s home in Nugegoda, a place that I have been coming to almost every single year since. It’s here that I tasted the wholesomeness of a home-cooked Sinhalese meal for the first time. Whenever there’s a thought of another Sri Lanka visit, the first thing that comes to mind is the prospect of eating kiri-baath or coconut milk rice. This is also something I enjoy with katta sambhol, and a fish curry in pepper sauce.
A few years after my first trip to Sri Lanka, I brought my mother to the island and her first observation after eating a rice and curry meal was that it tasted very similar to what she ate as a child in a village in Kerala’s Palakkad district. She was equally surprised that the concept of thair-shadam or curd rice did not exist here. Curd is consumed in Sri Lanka, but as a dessert with sweet Kithul (Caryota urens) palm syrup to cool the mouth and stomach.
Although there are many similarities in eating and drinking patterns in India and Sri Lanka, those who are connoisseurs of food in both countries can easily point out the differences. As a Malayali, I can’t even imagine starting off my day without a cup of good South Indian filter coffee, but in Sri Lanka I happily consume ‘tee’ (tea), made with milk powder. The only place I have had tea that is closer to our chai with fresh and creamy milk is Jaffna, which has its own culinary traditions that are indeed closer to Tamil Nadu.
While visiting Jaffna for the first time in 2018, I managed to get a taste of northern Sri Lankan Tamil cuisine. The dialect and accent of Tamil spoken in the peninsula is unique, but, quite strangely, sounds similar to Malayalam. While ordering breakfast in a small restaurant with Prasad’s now-grown up son Pavithra, I felt I managed to confidently ask for string hoppers and a local vegetarian curry. Putting on a Jaffna accent, I seemed to have convinced the staff that I was a local or, at worst, someone from the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, until I made the ‘mistake’ of asking for filter coffee. On hearing this, the owner approached us with a big smile and asked if we were Indians. It turns out that he lived in Chennai for many years and actually tried popularising filter coffee in Jaffna, albeit unsuccessfully. He said locals were fine with instant coffee and my request was a dead giveaway. The lunch buffets in Jaffna, especially at Akshathai are close to the ‘meals’ that are available in southern Tamil Nadu restaurants, but everything from the rasam to beans poriyal tasted blander than what I was used to in India, or maybe Sinhalese food had made my taste buds crave for more spicy dishes.
One area where there is unity in food habits across the island is snacks. Tea time treats in Sri Lanka, called ‘short eats,’ also have a few equivalents in Kerala. Christian families in the state make fish cutlets that taste quite similar to what one gets on the island, but the Portuguese influence is much stronger in Sri Lanka, which has an excellent baking tradition. Fish buns and sausage rolls that are available in just about every roadside bakery are by no means a traditional speciality in Kerala.
The desserts, however, have equivalents in both Goa and Kerala. Sri Lankans like Bibikkan almost as much as Goans like Bebinca. The former stands out for its use of shredded coconut, jaggery and semolina while the latter, a layered cake is made with ghee and coconut milk. Konda Kavum or oil cakes, a traditional sweet made around the Sinhalese new year is close to the Kerala nei-appam, though the Sri Lankan variant does not have bananas as a stuffing.
Sinhalese Buddhists have traditionally frowned upon eating beef, unlike in Kerala, where different varieties are enjoyed by members of all communities. Sri Lanka, though, has a tangy and mouthwatering black pork curry, made with tamarind paste, curry powder, and black pepper.
In twenty-two years, I have had my fair share of food adventures or rather miscalculations in Sri Lanka. One thing that Prasad, my first and best friend on the island, always reminds me of is my experiment with pol (coconut) roti. Back in 2005, we stopped by at a small restaurant near the ancient town of Polonnaruwa. The condiment that accompanied the roti was lunu miris, a paste comprising ground chillies and salt. Ignoring Prasad’s warnings, I spread the paste between two rotis and decided to wolf this ‘sandwich’ down. The combination was enough for me to breathe out fire like a mythical dragon. I was used to spicy food, but this was an altogether different experience. Three glasses of water did not cool down my mouth. I then tried to have cream soda and that only partly eased the burning. This was followed by more water and then lukewarm black tea with sugar. More than half an hour later I was still smarting from that experiment with lunu miris. My humble lesson from that incident was to never go against the advice of a local.
Twenty-two years after my first visit to this beautiful island, Sri Lankan food is an integral part of my diet. I make sure to take back curry powder, coconut milk powder and other ingredients whenever I return to Mumbai from Colombo. String hoppers with parippu and egg hoppers are a form of comfort food when I miss the greenery, blue waters of the Indian Ocean, the gentle chants of the Buddhist prayers called “Pirith,” the white stupas, maroon buses, and the warm smiles of not just my Sri Lankan family but the general public as a whole.
I was in Colombo during the island’s economic crisis in 2022 and witnessed firsthand how there were shortages of milk powder, fuel, and persistent power cuts. Two weeks after I left the island, the despotic regime that ran the country like a family business was ousted by a popular uprising. Two-and-a-half years later, the lower strata of society are yet to totally recover from the effects of the crisis. Food prices rose to a level that would have seemed unimaginable five years ago. As an Indian visitor, whose rupee stretches wide because of the exchange rate, I did not feel much of a shock while buying groceries and eating out in 2024-25, but those with salaries that have not kept pace with the rising prices definitely feel the pinch.
I try to be a Sri Lankan food ambassador in Mumbai. Dishes from the island are on the menu when I have guests. Visitors to my home, without fail, fall in love with parippu the same way I did when I tasted it for the first time in 2003. Maybe one day, an enterprising person from the island will open an authentic Sri Lankan restaurant in my hometown Mumbai, the way many of their compatriots have done so in the UK, Canada, and the USA. While spending December 2024 in Goa, I often passed by a restaurant in Panjim by the name of Jaffna Jump. I found out much later that it was opened by someone with strong Sri Lankan links and serves both Tamil and Sinhalese cuisine. It’s definitely a place I want to visit the next time I am in Goa. Until then, I can only partly rely on the freshly-restocked Sri Lankan ingredients in my kitchen to enjoy the culinary delights of a culture that is intimately close to the one I was raised in.
Photos – Ajay Kamalakaran
