"The food is amazing’" I heard this more times than I can say in the run up to my visit to the "teardropisland" of Sri Lanka. I smiled as people waxed lyrical about drinking king coconuts by the side of the road and, yes, I was quite interested in the buffalo curd served in clay pots with honey. But I have to be honest and say that I doubted the food could be so superlatively special.
This year alone, I've already been to Japan and Mauritius, two of the best culinary countries a fat, greedy woman could wish for. I’ve lived in Argentina, Italy, Portugal, Thailand and Vietnam. Basically, I knew the food would have to be something unearthly to make it into my top 10 culinary destinations. And, God bless my elasticated waistband, Sri Lanka did not disappoint.
I was on this trip with my best friend of two decades, a head teacher in an extremely disadvantaged part of London, with two kids of her own in great need of a break. Our agenda? Eat well, drink a lot of cocktails and catch up on all the gossip we missed while potty training, burning alphabites, dealing with chronic illness and balancing jobs and home life.
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Of course, it is a given that the places with no names will be delicious, and this definitely proved true. On our first night we went to a local food market in Colombo where they laid banana leaves across the wooden table and poured on mountains of Kothu Roti - think fried rice but with finely chopped, crispy roti - for us to scoop up with our hands. The next day, catching a train to the mountain town of Kandy, while eating Parippu Wade, spiced chickpea dhal fritters and drinking a frothy concoction of condensed milk, black tea and cardamom as the jungle whooshed by, I didn't believe that life could get better. But I had yet to experience the contemporary food scene in Sri Lanka.
In the tiny Southern surf town of Hiriketiya we walked 10 minutes from our hotel through a coconut grove delighting in watching families of monkeys jump from telegraph wire to telegraph wire while fireflies lit our way. Given its location, under palms and so close to the beach you can hear the surf roaring, you might be expecting something rustic from Smoke and Bitters, but it was voted #86 of the best 100 cocktail bars in the world and is all relaxed elegance.
Cocktails come tiki-style with, as the name might suggest, bitter and smoky notes. This continues on to the menu with dishes such as smoked pumpkin, beetroot rice, pickled orange, kiri hodi, almond feta, gotukola and peanut rayu and a home-made smoked Lankan Burrata with house cured anchovies, grilled mango and cashews. We finished with a buffalo curd panacotta and left in despair that we couldn’t eat or drink another thing.
After that, we were on a roll. We returned to the Unesco World Heritage site, Galle Fort, twice because we simply could not eat everything the place had to offer in one day. Within the walls of the historic fort built in the 16th century by the Portuguese, you will find foodie heaven.
We started our first evening in Ropewalk, Sri Lanka’s first Arrack speciality cocktail bar. Arrack, a traditional Sri Lankan spirit made of fermented coconut flower sap and sugar cane will power your car and put hairs on your chest but in the hands of the Ropewalk mixologists it becomes something quite elevated. We drank a "Beetroot" made with halmilla arrack, beetroot and rosemary juice, rose water, pineapple extract and lime juice reclined on a huge cream sofa and the moment was only slightly ruined by my husband calling to find out when bin day was.
Afterwards we walked through the fairy-light-strewn, cobbled streets of Muslim Quarter to a modest pink and blue shop named Dairy King, having been assured had the best ice cream in Sri Lanka. As we sat on the benches outside waiting for our salted caramel and crunchy cashew cones, we heard singing in Arabic. The owner came out and invited us, holding our ice-creams, into their small home where we met 10 shy teenage girls in hoodies singing prayers for a Muslim festival. We thanked them for the beautiful singing and slipped out to eat the best ice-cream I’ve ever had. As I paid the bill the owner asked if I sang the British anthem, "God save our gracious King’" I told him I did not sing to the King ever. And he replied, laughing, that now I could sing to the Dairy King. I agreed that was an allegiance I could pledge.
On our last night, back in the hot, frenetic and fascinating capital, Colombo, we headed for what we called The Last Dinner; by which we meant the last dinner without having to cut up some fish fingers and shove them into a child’s salivating open mouth.
Paradise Road, The Gallery Cafe, was once the office of the famous Sri Lankan architect Jeffrey Bawa, the so-called godfather of the Tropical Modernist movement. It is certainly an extraordinary restaurant to walk into with two long fish ponds containing black and white Koi Carp curling around each other like yin and yang, wood furniture and flickering candles against distressed cement. The food was, as you might expect, as beautiful, tasteful and aesthetically driven as the surroundings but the highlight for me was probably the frozen gin and tonic and a dessert of banana split made with homemade coconut ice cream and honeycomb. I guess you can take a woman to a classy place but you can't always give her class.
There is so much more to Sri Lanka than the food but I left feeling the food does mirror the experience we had there. It is offered with warmth, thought and intention, each experience a surprise and a delight and always so much more than expected.
Kerry Hudson is an award-winning, best-selling novelist and memoirist and a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers. You can find her on Instagram and on Threads @ThatKerryHudson
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