Best Sri Lankan fruits to try – Savour the luscious goodness!

Resembling a mini coconut at first appearance, wood apples possess a hard shell though not as hard as the coconut shell and an appealing aroma especially when it is ripening. Also referred to as the elephant apple as this fruit is a favourite of the majestic creatures who eat them along with the shell. The ripe fruit can be easily cracked exposing soft flesh with small seeds. This flesh is often made into a delicious beverage and served chilled at many restaurants in Bentota which is relished by locals as well as visitors.

Also called Thambili (meaning the colour orange in the local language) as the fruit is orange in colour. It is a variety of coconut, and its water is delicious containing less sugar than in a regular coconut. A great thirst quencher when you are out in the open for hours, great bunches of Thambili can be found all over the island at wayside stalls where you can enjoy the drink and savour the soft creamy pulp within the fruit to refresh and hydrate you.

A lovely fruit ranging from small to large sizes and coming in different hues of yellow, green, and red depending on the variety. The ripe mangoes expel a mouth-watering aroma enticing you to enjoy its goodness. Being a stone fruit, its flesh is used in many different ways. When raw it can be made into an awesome pickle, when ripe it is eaten fresh or made into juices, smoothies added to fruit salads etc as relished by guests at Villa 700.

A colourful tropical fruit, the flesh can be light orange to almost red in different varieties of the fruit. Eat fresh at breakfast or to be consumed as a juice the soft and sweet flesh can be used in numerous other ways too such as in fruit salads, made into jam, and delightful smoothies or salsas.

This small golf ball-sized fruit is either red or green-skinned and is from the lychee and logan fruit family. The skin is not hard however having a hairy texture. When the ripened rambutan skin is opened the translucent white flesh is exposed. It has a sweet and creamy taste with a single seed within the flesh easy to enjoy even from a wayside stall.

An exotic deep purple fruit with a thick skin slightly bigger than the rambutan, which can be easily opened when ripe exposing the creamy white juicy inner flesh segmented just like in a mandarin or an orange. This flesh is a mix of delicious sweet and sour tastes making you want to enjoy more of them and each segment has a seed similar to rambutans.