Traditional foods

Fish Curry and Mixed Rice

Though Sri Lankan food has parallels to South Indian food, yet it remains distinctly its own form of cuisine.
Throughout years of colonization and influence from other countries, Sri Lanka has adapted its food culture into a blend of different curry concoctions and tasty dishes.
A few things about Sri Lankan food can be said with certainty: Sri Lankans thoroughly love spices, they love food that explodes with flavor, and many enjoy deep fried, and very tasty, snacks. Whatever you choose to eat in Sri Lanka, your mouth is going to rejoice with happiness.
Sri Lanka, being an island with a tropical climate, coconuts and fish are two of the most influential components of Sri Lankan cuisine. Fish is made into curries, and coconut in some form or another, is a dominant ingredient in cooking.
Rice and curry is the Sri Lankan staple, though various kinds of bread, both roti style flatbreads and even loaves of bread, are very common.

There’s nothing more common to eat as Sri Lankan food than a nutritious plate of rice and curry. You normally get a plate of rice piled with a few of the daily vegetable curries and a choice of fish curry as well.

Deviled Sweet and Sour Fish Curry

There are a lot of different deviled dishes in Sri Lanka. This fish was deep fried and smothered in a lovely sweet and sour sauce and lightly fried again with red onions and banana peppers. It was excellent with fried rice and a flatbread paratha on the side.

Chili Fish Curry

This particular fish curry in Sri Lanka reminded me of the Burmese food curry that I also highly enjoyed, except it was often a bit heavier on the spice blend, which I loved.
The fish curry in Sri Lanka was extremely fragrant, oily, and the sauce was marvelous with a giant plate of rice.

Sri Lankan Dhal Curry (Parippu)

Dhal curry is one of the most commonly consumed staple dishes in Sri Lankan cuisine.

The dhal, usually masoor dhal which are red lentils, are often cooked in a beautiful blend of spices, and then a few spoons of coconut milk are added to create a rich stew.

Dhal curry is omnipresent in Sri Lanka, and it’s consumed with all forms of rice and bread.

Young Jack Curry (Polos)

Sri Lankan food is famous for its curries – and “polos“, or young jackfruit curry, is one of my personal favorites.
Jackfruit is eaten in a number of different ripeness stages in Sri Lanka, but for preparing polos, the young, unripe jackfruit is used. The fruit is cut into chunks and simmered in a blend of rich spices.
This particular version (brown dish above) was so delicious, I couldn’t stop eating it. The pieces of jackfruit were tender, and tasted almost like a juicier version of a potato, and they were filled with the beautiful flavor spices.
Polos is so good, it could almost pass for chunks of tender beef!

Gotukola Sambol (Pennywort Salad)

Green leafy vegetables aren’t the most common thing to eat in Sri Lanka, though the cooking does call for many tuberous vegetables. But anyway, since I love green veggies, I ate a dish known as Gotukola Sambol, frequently during my visit.

Gotukola is the word for Asiatic pennywort, a small leafy green vegetable that’s common throughout southeast Asia. Sambol is the word used to describe a dish or garnish that prepared and eaten using raw ingredients. So gotukola sambol is a basically Sri Lankan salad garnish.

The gotukola is first sliced very finely, then mixed with grated coconut meat, red onions, and a few extra spices for seasoning. Asiatic pennywort has a very green flavor, I think it can be compared to the green flavor of kale, and it’s refreshing and crisp.

I think I could call it the Middle Eastern tabbouleh of Sri Lanka.

Beetroot Curry

A plate of Sri Lankan curry and rice is complete only when a nice helping of beetroot curry is included! No that’s not really true, you can have a plate of curry without beetroot. However, when I was traveling in Sri Lanka, I came to love the beetroot curry – it’s such a wonderful dish.

The beets are diced up before being cooked to death with a number of spices including cinnamon and curry leaves. The beets are nice and soft, and rich in flavor.

Throughout the duration of my stay, I just couldn’t get enough of this blood red vegetable, that tastes so good with other curries.

Vegetarian Kottu

An extremely popular Sri Lankan street food dish is known as kottu or kottu roti.

Essentially it is composed of shredded pieces of Sri Lankan godamba roti, which is sort of like a giant sized paratha (an oily fried piece of thin dough), that is stir fried with an assortment of spices and a choice of other meaty (or vegetarian) ingredients.

Kottu roti is sort of like the “hamburger” of Sri Lanka, something that’s so tasty, available as a fast meal, and it’s basically nearly impossible to resist.

To take things even to the next level, kottu is usually served with a separate bowl of curry sauce, used to moisten and add extra flavor to the stir fried flatbread.