Ice Cream at Lingan Cream House Jaffna Sri Lanka

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Regional variations don't seem to exist in Sri Lanka any more: it seems too small now to have anything that's uniquely from an area. You can eat Chilaw Crab curry anywhere in the country and no one - not even the cook - even knows it's from there. Wherever you go, the improvements in roads and the spread of supermarkets means that everyone makes everything pretty much the same way.

But when we set out to travel or eat, we want to see something different. That's why we were excited about visiting Jaffna. We knew its isolation from the rest of the country meant that it had developed an uniquely indigenous cuisine. (see the article on Green Grass Hotel and Restaurant Jaffna for more) What we were surprised to find was that it had also developed an uniquely indigenous ice cream.

Genuine Humbugs Hakgala Nuwara Eliya Sri Lanka - Strawberries and Cream

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One of my favorite legacies from our colonial overlords is strawberries and cream. The tartness of the strawberries countered by the sweetness of the cream with a little white sugar crunch is, without a doubt, one of the best bits of oppression I have ever undergone.

But eating strawberries and cream in Colombo is no good. You have to eat it in the hill country where either the climate and environment or nostalgia for my childhood years on a Nuwara Eliya estate adds an extra dimension of taste.

Restaurants in Negombo Sri Lanka - Rodeo Burger - Oasis Pizza - Phoenix - Bijou Swiss - Villa Araliya Vegetarian

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Negombo, 1.5 hours from Colombo, is a small tourist town / fishing village with a walkable strip of restaurants on Poruthota Rd (formerly Lewis Place) and hotels around it. Because it's so compact, you can go from kadala karaththe to restaurant to pub and stagger back to your room at the end of the night.

Even better, there are a wide variety of restaurants, all of which are quite good and reasonably priced. As a result, even when we went for a holiday weekend at Villa Araliya, all we did was eat. Negombo has all these activities like Dutch Canal rides - with kasippu on the way - and Muthurajawela swamp visits but we never cared: we just hung out and hoovered various kinds of food. These were some of our favorites:

Coco Veranda Coffee House Colombo - Restaurant in Colombo Sri Lanka

You Should Coco


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Paying more than LKR 200 for coffee at a coffee shop seems insane to me. For a few (hundred) rupees more, you can drink a beer on the Galle Face terrace. Given this choice, I’d always go for the more drunken option.

So, when Coco Verandah opened up on Ward Place about half a km from Odel, I thought it just another addition to the multitude of coffee shops with vaguely interesting names, lookalike ambience and average food.

We were passing by on a weekday, though, and we were hungry. Hungry enough that we couldn’t last all the way to Odel. So we dropped in and, avoiding the coffee, ordered the burgers and a sandwich instead.

Green Grass Hotel and Restaurant in Jaffna Sri Lanka - Where to Eat In Jaffna

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Jaffna's cuisine embraced the peninsula's limitations and evolved in glorious isolation from the Indian subcontinent and the rest of Sri Lanka. Accordingly, Jaffna food is very different from the rest of Sri Lanka's and, when you visit, you might want to try some.

Good luck with that! Jaffna is still getting used to being open after 4pm so places to eat out are still few and far between.

The only place we found, after two or three hours walking around Jaffna town asking for crabs and kool, was Green Grass Hotel and Restaurant, +94 221 222 4385, off Hospital Rd. It was a place a friend from Jaffna (who now works in Colombo) found for us. It is different from the usual dark, dingy places that dot Jaffna town in that the tables are set in a big garden with a gaudy fountain.

Things I learned about eating out in 2009 – The Good

I spent a lot of time eating out in 2009. These are a few of the standouts:

Fine Dining - I've always appreciated the Cinnamon hotels because the food there is good but not overpriced. Their Epicurean menu (LKR 1600++, Thursdays) at Tao, Cinnamon Grand, +94 011 2497369 - a 24 item tasting menus - is a good example. There may be a better fine dining value in Sri Lanka but I haven't found it. Forget how cheap it is: the technique on the plate is excellent.

Tiramisu - The best tiramisu is at Reghina Margherita (photo below, on left). The cheapest decent tiramisu is at Taprobane Coffee Shop Cinnamon Grand or Bars Café (photo below, on right).


Pizza - Pizza at Echo Cinnamon Grand is cheaper than Reghina Margherita but still as good. 7 Degrees North at Cinnamon Lakeside, +94 11 2491000 also has a good, cheap pizza.


Donuts - Keells Bakery donuts are better than Gonuts and are 50% off after 7pm


Outdoor Restaurant - Summer Garden (86A, Green Path, Colombo 7, +94 11-4940540, turn into the second gate after the the National Art Gallery) is the cheapest place to have a drink outside. It has an amazing mixed grill with bacon and all (LKR 750, enough for 2) and a pretty damn good chop suey (LKR 400, enough for 2).


Rice & Curry - If you’re on your way to Batticaloa or Polonnaruwa, stop at Woodside Tour Inn in Giritale for an amazing rice (keeri samba) and curry – ask for the lake fish fillet fried in breadcrumb to be added to your meal.


Rice & Curry 2 - If you’re passing Haldemulla on your way to Arugambay, you must stop at Thunmansala for breakfast or lunch or both. The view is amazing. On a clear day, yes, that's the Kiri Vehera.


Rice & Curry 3 - Cheap, clean, tasty food? In Anuradhapura, the only way to get all three adjectives is at Family Super.


Nostalgia - Fountain Café is open again at Keells Union Place. They’ve got some of the old menu, some of the same cooks and even one of the old waiters. Even the Knickerbocker Glory should be back now. Here’s a hint, though - it doesn’t taste the same because we were young then. Nothing tastes as good as it used to: nostalgia is the sweetest sauce.


Street Food - Burgers King (old name Mr Burger King) has expanded and their beef kebab is awesome. Imitation shawarma places are everywhere – there’s an inscrutable Malay guy running one in between Odel and Rahumaniyas.


Street Food (best for last!) - The kadala (chick pea) guy in Katunayake (turn right at the T junction just before the airport security check; he’s usually in front of the row of food joints in the evening) makes his “taste” with tiny dried shrimp. I have eaten food in Sri Lanka aplenty but this is probably the one item of food I enjoyed the most last year.

Taste of Asia Jaffna Restaurant Colombo Sri Lanka - Jaffna Food Wellawatte Sri Lanka

Jaffna cuisine is Sri Lanka's only indigenous Tamil cuisine. Just like Sri Lankan Malay food, it started off South Indian hundreds of years ago and evolved into its own unique variant. Shamefully, though, if you ask the average Colombo-ite (Colombo-ian?) to take you for Tamil food, you'll likely end up at a South Indian vegetarian place.

This is because there are so many South Indian restaurants and hardly any Jaffna restaurants here (other than the over priced, now closed Peninsula and the over priced, still open Palmyrah at Hotel Renukah). If you wanted decently priced Jaffna food, you had to invite yourself over to a Tamil friend's house.

Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, with the end of the war, a couple more reasonably priced Jaffna restaurants have opened up. The first one, Taste of Asia opened just a few months ago on Galle Rd, Wellawatte (it's the sea side, between the checkpoint after the Savoy cinema and Kinross Ave, next to the Perera and Sons).

New Letchumi Bhawan Tamil Vegetarian Street Food Colombo Sri Lanka

Stuff Posh People Like: Saivara Fare

In Colombo, we're blessed with an abundance of restaurants serving Tamil vegetarian food. The usual suspects like the Mathuras and the Shanthi Vihars litter the streets of Colombo, serving acres and acres of dosa nightly.

My favourite such place is a little less well known. It's also not as nice but 1) it's also cheaper 2) that's part of the fun. New Letchumi Bhawan is on Ernest De Silva Mw (formerly Flower Road) in between Cotton Collection and Leather Collection. It's an odd bird in that herd but it's an awfully tasty one.

Cheese & Chocolate Rottis at Hansika Roti Shop Hikkaduwa Sri Lanka

When I went recently with a group of IT BPO people to Galle for a career fair, I found out that not everyone knows about chicken/cheese and chocolate rotis. They're just like egg rotis but, instead of egg, they're filled with chocolate or cheese and chicken. These tasty beasts are endemic to Hikkaduwa - the original rotti shop is in Narigama Beach.

Recently, as our normal roti shop (opposite the original) had run out of chicken, we drove on a little and saw a really nice place with a signboard advertising cheese / chicken / chocolate rotis "with recipes from the UK!" This was the Hansika Roti Shop.

Most roti shops are not places you can take anyone. This shop however is more like a restaurant with nice wooden benches attached to tables. Most rotti shops have menus on the wall. Here, when we sat down, they gave us a printed, laminated menu with multiple pages! (It even has a burger section - I will write about that later when I revisit...)

So we ordered cheese and chicken rotis (LKR 80) and chocolate rotis (LKR 140). And they came, well presented and plated, with cutlery, even. Both were really good with a lot of cheese inside the cheese and chicken roti and decent amounts of chocolate inside the chocolate one.

Satisfied, I decided to solve this "recipes from the UK" business. I walked around and saw a newspaper clipping hanging on the wall about a Lahiru "Larry" Jayasekara, who came from Hikkaduwa and worked under Gordon Ramsey and was now, at 23, running his own place in UK.

When I asked the lady at the cash register about it, she beamed with maternal pride and told me he was her son and gave me a list of his accomplishments. As my brother is also a chef, we had a long chat about the perils and pleasures of chef-relatedness.

So, if you go to the Hikkaduwa Beach Festival, drop by Hansika for a chicken and cheese roti. And, while you're there, ask Mrs Jayasekara (behind the counter) about her son. It's a nice finish to an excellent menu.

Malay Food Festival at Galadari Coffee Shop

The festival is on till tonight (Sat 27th Jun 09)

When I was homesick for some Sri Lankan food, I used to go to a Malaysian restaurant. They had godamba roti (called it roti canai) and the chicken curry was identical to Sri Lankan chicken curry.

In Sri Lanka, though, there are almost no places to eat Malay food. So when I heard about the the (Sri Lankan) Malay Food Festival at the Galadari Coffee Shop (LKR 1400 nett per head), I didn't hesitate to bundle my wife into the car and go.

To ensure the food's authenticity, they had got actual Sri Lankan Malay housewives to stay in the hotel and assist the chefs.

I noticed two things about the food. The first is how different Sri Lankan Malay food is from Malaysian food. It seems like Sri Lankan Malay food started at Malaysian and evolved in its own way from there.

The second is how ordinary many of the Sri Lankan Malay dishes feel. Dishes like chicken curry, peanut and cashew curry, curried ash plantains, pittu, malay pickle and dodol are standard fare at the average Sinhala Buddhist table. To me, that signifies just how much the influence of the Malays, a relatively tiny minority, has shaped Sri Lankan cuisine.

They also had Malay songs and dances. Even these songs and dances feel very Sri Lankan.

When foreigners ask me about Sri Lankan cuisine, I always emphasise its Malay connections and downplay its similarities to Indian food. To me, our food is nothing like Indian food but a helluva lot like Malaysian. Go tonight and see for yourself.

PS: The Sri Lankan Malay community was out in force, dressed up to the nines - salwars, kurtas and cheongsams. Wear something nice and go.

PPS: If you know of any Malay restaurants (or eating places or holes in the wall) in Colombo, let me know in the comments...

Restaurant Name: Galadari Coffee Shop
Address: Galadari Hotel, 64 Lotus Road, Colombo 1
Phone: call +94 112 544 544 and ask for the Coffee Shop
Price: LKR 1,400 nett per head

Arugam Bay Hotels and Restaurants - Travel Guide

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Arugambay is full of places to stay. None of them are super posh but they're usually cheap. LKR 700 was the cheapest rate I was quoted and LKR 5000 was the most expensive.

To find a place to stay, we just walked along the beach south from Stardust, walking into beach front guest houses and hotels and checking them out.

Where to stay (in beach order):
Stardust - The most expensive. LKR 5,000 for a "Luxury" room to LKR 2,000 for a beach cabana. The beach cabanas were cramped and basic. We didn't check out the rooms as they are in the main building and placed further away from the beach, which is really not what we wanted. +94 63 224 8191.

Galaxy Lounge - Where we ended up staying. All cabanas. LKR 1,500-2,000 per cabana. Big, airy toilets. Probably the nicest we saw there. +94 63 224 8415.

Ranga's Beach Hut - LKR 1,500. Cabanas with shared showers and tiny toilets. Ranga's visitors are very loyal and keep returning. However, we didn't find the accomodation to be that great. His food is another story. +94 63 224 8202.

Watermusic - LKR 1,300. All cabanas - better than Ranga's/Stardust. +94 63 567 1431.

Aloha Cabanas - LKR 1,500. All cabanas with en-suite bathrooms. Better than Ranga's and Stardust but not as good as Galaxy. +94 63 224 8379.

Where to eat:
Food in Arugambay hotels is relatively expensive compared to the room rates. It's why you see the tourists eating at the kottu joints which line the road.

At Galaxy Lounge, meals were about LKR 450-600 per head. The food there was good: they had some innovative dishes like Coconut Roti Pizzas and more basic meals like beef kebabs with rice salad, all of which were done quite well. When we asked, they made us an excellent crab curry.

Ranga's Beach Hut has amazing food, done Jaffna style. Ranga looks like the average Yogi - grey hair, beard, bare chest, belly and sarong. The seating is common and it's a lot of fun to see who you can talk to.



There is a set menu and you sit down and eat. The first night we went, he had string hoppers, poori and paratha with curries and prawns. It's all you can eat except the prawns. We paid LKR 450 per head and were stuffed.

We also went to Gecko. Gecko had hamburgers (LKR 540) on its menu so we ordered those. The waiter asked whether we wanted tomatoes, onions and lettuce on the burger. The burger came and it was good but nothing special and didn't come close to our Holiday Inn burger.

When the bill came, there were 2 salads on it, LKR 250 each, which we hadn't ordered. The waiter told me that the onion, lettuce and tomato ON THE BURGER is considered SALAD and they charge separately for it. I hate it when people nickel and dime you with tiny fees and don't tell you in advance. Just charge 800 bucks for the fucking burger already.

We went to Stardust for dinner one night because we'd heard raves about the food. There were only two other tables taken - both foreigners. After waiting for about 15 min, in full sight of the manageress, we called a waiter over to take our order. He came over, said someone else would take the order and disappeared. We waited 15 min more, in which time the manageress had chatted to both tables but continued to ignore us. Finally, we got up and left. Api kalu nisada? Is it 'cos we was black?

(Click here for Arugambay Travel Guide Part 1 for how to get there.)

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Reghina Margherita and Echo Cinnamon Grand Pizza Restaurants Colombo Sri Lanka - Spicy or Cheesy? Sweet!

I've always been a bit of a pizza snob. To me, real pizza is not Italian - it never was - but New York pizza. I think it's the water. In most places here in Colombo, the pizza just doesn't feel right in an I-don't-know-much-about-art-but-I-know-what-I-like manner. Even Il Ponte at the Hilton, which possesses a wood fired brick oven, only offers pizza that is both expensive and mediocre.

So, when we recently got a pizza craving, we decided to visit some of the newer Italian restaurants - Echo at the Cinnamon Grand and Reghina Margherita - to try theirs out.

Park Street Mews Restaurant in Colombo Sri Lanka - Ingredient Cuisine

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Recently, we dined at Park Street Mews,a new bistro style restaurant with a lounge and dining space, on Park Street in Colombo 2. (Legally, new restaurants can only open in streets named Park).

From the outside, it looks just like a sidewalk cafe abroad which I loved. Sri Lanka, with its nice nighttime weather, should be full of these. Inside, the space which looks like a converted warehouse is huge. The decor is an odd mix of polished cement floors, exposed brick walls, leather sofas in multiple colours, a multitude of lamps, steel and glass fronted display cases and wood carvings. If this smorgasbord of styles is insufficient, there is a private dining area which is positively Pollockian.

They don't yet have a liquor license so you can bring your own. There's no corkage but your bill has to be at least LKR 2000. At dinner, at least, this is not difficult. Appetisers and soups are around LKR 500, mains go from LKR 850 all the way to LKR 1900.

Best Burger of 2008 at Gardenia Cafe, Holiday Inn - Fast food in Colombo Sri Lanka

The year has been a tumultuous one. Lehman Brothers and Danduwam Mudalali, failed in different ways. Asantha De Mel left his office, poppin' his zero cost collar and blaming everyone else.

Yet us Sri Lankans continue caring for nothing other than what's for dinner (heta marunath...). But in our precarious economic times, we have cut back, eating it as cheaply as we can. Maybe the paang has less maalu, maybe the sambol has less pol. But we cannot give it up completely for then the economic terrorists would have won.

For our personal stand against indigence and gloom, we go to the Gardenia Coffee Shop at the Holiday Inn hotel in Colombo. Coffee shops in posh hotels are really good places to eat cheap and this is no exception. It is fairly nicely done in with banquettes to sit on and the pool to look at. The only objectionable elements are the menu and table mats, cheaply printed and laminated as if at a greasy diner.

Day Trip to Yapahuwa Rock Fortress via Kurunegala Sri Lanka - Chop Suey and Chinese Lions

Sometimes, when visiting places in Sri Lanka, multiple days aren't required. The island is small enough that a 3 hour drive out of Colombo can take you somewhere completely different.

Yapahuwa is one of these places. In the 13th century, one of our kings, seeing how well Sigiriya had turned out for King Kasyapa, (Tangent: Actually if King Kasyapa had just stayed on the rock and lobbed things at his enemies, he'd've done fine. What's the point of a giant rock fortress if you're not going to use it?) decided to build his palace on another giant rock. Unfortunately for us sightseer types (and I suppose fortunately for those who had to actually carve and carry things up the rock), his ambitions were nowhere as lofty as Kasyapa. And his subsequent PR was also nowhere nearly as good as Kasyapa.


This lack of Sigiriya level awareness means, however, that Yapahuwa is nowhere nearly as crowded as Sigiriya is. And while it is not as impressive as Sigiriya, it still is pretty impressive.

First, you get the iconic stone staircase with the Chinese lions, the ones on our ten rupee note. Looking at it makes you queasy as its steepness makes it feel like you're going to be climbing one of those rollercoaster rails that curls back on itself. As you climb, though, your confidence increases till, at the top, you pretty much could be the king, looking out and surveying all the land you reign over.


For most people, that's it. However, from there, you can walk through a forest path to the top. The path is overgrown and all the signs tell you not to go past the staircase area but you should. It's worth it when you reach the top and survey that vista.

Yapahuwa should be done as a day trip. This is how I would do it: Leave at 9am - weekdays (except Tuesdays: it is closed) are preferable as it is less crowded - from Colombo.

Stop at Diya Dahara Hotel in Kurunegala - which is right by the lake - for lunch. Get a table by the lake and order the Diya Dahara House Special which is a gigantic, incredibly tasty Sri Lankan chop suey - one dish is enough for about 3 people. Gorge on the chop suey while enjoying the lake view and a couple of beers. Leave for Yapahuwa by 1:30pm, climb it by 3pm (wait for sunset if you can) and you can be back in Colombo by 9pm. The Cholas never had it this easy.

Hotel Name: Diya Dahara
Address: 7 North Lake Rd, Kurunegala
Phone: (037) 222 3452
More Pictures: Picasaweb

Burger's King - Mr Burger King - Malay St Chicken Shawarma - Fast Food Colombo Sri Lanka

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Naming conventions are an odd thing in Sri Lanka. Many shops have rip off names, taking a well known name and modifying it just a little bit. Whether it's a little guy running a pastry shop called Move'n'Pick (Dharmapala Mw), a medium guy running a clothes store called Opel (Ethul Kotte Rd) or a big guy running a security firm called Ceylinco CISCO (everywhere, it seems), this is an accepted part of Sri Lankan business life.

Accordingly, the son of the fabled Nana's (the name of which was ripped off over and over again - there must be ten thousand Nana's in Sri Lanka) has set up Mr Burger King. Leaving alone the debate as to whether a royal personage could be referred to "Mister," we can instead focus on the food. And the location.

Rice and Curry on the A1 (Colombo Puttalam Road) - Road Food

Driving on Sri Lankan rural roads is heaven. The main roads are usually carpeted, well maintained and traffic-free. But I also mean it in an aesthetic sense: rural roads here are surrounded by lush greenery, ancient trees, flowers (which I struggle to grow in my own garden) growing wild, lakes, sea, beach, cloudless blue skies and sunsets.

But what is usually difficult to find is a nice place to eat in the midst of this splendor. Usually, it's a dark, dank shop where the tables face the road and the view is only used to dump garbage from the kitchen. The rice and curries in such places are usually good but it is really difficult to find a place which lets in at least some of the beauty of the surroundings while you gorge on far too much rice and a tiny little bit of curry.

After many, many trips, my wife found this little place, a bath kade, on the A1 which runs from Colombo to Puttalam, which goes some way towards bridging this gap. It is at the 63rd km post on the A1 where on the land side you see a sign "Little Hut Bath Buffet."

It is a tiny little place but where you sit is in the greenery as you can see from the photos. The food is quite good with quite a bit of variety. It cost around Rs 150 for a meat rice and curry (mas kaama, dude!)


Restaurant Name: Little Hut Bath Buffet
Address: 63km post, Colombo-Puttalam Rd (about 1.5 hrs out of Colombo on a good day)

Five Stars on the Cheap at Taprobane Coffee Shop Cinnamon Grand - Restaurant Review Colombo Sri Lanka

In my previous existence in New York City, we used to go to the most upscale restaurants and see how we could come out with the lowest bill. We used to call this game 'Being Broke.' Or 'Being Poor.'

Here in Sri Lanka, the way to do this is to go into a posh hotel and eat at the coffee shop of said hotel. Taprobane Coffee Shop at the Cinnamon Grand is such a place - I discovered it after a heavy night out (this was before I got married and started falling asleep at 10pm) The ambience is really nice - the view is better than most hotel coffee shops except for the Hilton - and the menu is extensive and cheap.