Sri Lankan food gets summarised as 'rice and curry' more often than it deserves. That phrase covers an enormous range of dishes, and the island's food is distinct from its South Indian neighbours even where the influences overlap.
Kottu roti
Chopped flatbread stir-fried on a hot griddle with vegetables, egg and your choice of meat, seasoned and tossed with the same rhythmic chopping sound you'll hear from roadside stalls in the evening. Best eaten hot, straight off the griddle.
Hoppers (Appa)
A bowl-shaped pancake made from fermented rice batter and coconut milk, crisp at the edges and soft in the centre. Egg hoppers, with an egg cracked into the middle while it cooks, are the classic breakfast order.
Rice and curry
A proper rice and curry meal is really several small dishes at once: a main curry, a few vegetable curries, a sambol or two, and often a dhal. The variety is the point; no two rice and curry plates are quite the same.
Lunu miris and pol sambol
Two condiments you'll see constantly: lunu miris, a sharp onion-and-chilli paste, and pol sambol, grated coconut with chilli and lime. Both turn up alongside almost every meal, including breakfast.
King coconut
Thambili, the orange-husked king coconut, is sold roadside across the island and is worth stopping for, sweeter and more mineral than the greener coconuts sold elsewhere, and always drunk fresh.
