Dishes You Need to Try While in Sri Lanka - revel in the mouth-watering flavours of the idyllic teardrop island

Sri Lanka's visitors would undoubtedly recognise rice as a primary aspect of the country's culinary culture. Sri Lankans appreciate and consume an unexpectedly vast range of rice dishes, including the renowned and conventional milk rice. The dish, named for the key ingredient, coconut milk, is widely favoured and an essential component of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year festivities. Milk rice is often prepared by boiling the rice with coconut milk and salt, which is then left to cool and set before being cut into diamond-shaped portions for serving.

Similar to the aforementioned milk rice, lamprais too is yet another variation of rice in the rice-blessed and rice-loving nation, but undeniably a more generous variation than most dishes of rice found in the island country. The flavourful rice dish is traditionally served on a banana leaf, where a scoop of rice sits on the banana leaf, surrounded by a host of curries, which usually includes, egg plant pickle, chicken, seeni sambol (onion relish), fried ash plantain, blachan (shrimp paste) and boiled eggs.

The festive season of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year is a time of the year that a whole host of mouth-watering traditional sweets come to life in every household across the country. Aluwa is one such treat and definitely an unmissable during the local festival. Tourists to the island nation craving a bite of this delight of roasted rice flour, cashew nuts and cardamom don’t have wait until the local new year comes around as you could find plenty of aluwa being served at local cafes and coffee shops throughout the country.

For a totally authentic experience, why not finish off your traditional meal with a traditional dessert. Curd, or meekiri, as it is known in the local dialect, where “mee” is for cow and “kiri” is for milk, is a traditional yoghurt or fermented milk product. It is obtained by coagulating milk in a sequential process called curdling, hence “curd”. The loosely sour-tasting dessert is best enjoyed with the accompaniment of traditionally made kithul treacle.

No matter what you savour on your trip to the Indian Ocean island nation, your experience would not be complete without enjoying some kottu. The slightly spicy yet incredibly flavourful Sri Lankan dish consists of chopped roti, a meat curry dish of choice, along with scrambled egg, onions, and chillies. This dish can be savoured at restaurants in Wattala and many other eateries in other parts of the country. One can also find this dish at the restaurants offered by places such as Pegasus Reef Hotel.