Food In Sri Lanka: 15 Delicious Dishes You Should Not Miss!

Of all the things that I expected in Sri Lanka, I did not expect my taste buds to actually fall in love with the food in Sri Lanka. As a person who suffers from Irritable Bowel Syndrome, I find that finding a cuisine that suits my stomach is hard because I need to eat food that isn’t oily.

Not that I don’t indulge every once n a while but if I don’t have food that suits me, I fall sick. So, I’m cautious. That means that I get to eat fruits and ice cream all the time. The delightful part about the Sri Lankan food was that it was low in oil and high in fibre most of the time.

There are exceptions but those exceptions I could deal with. It also had a good deal of spices (read flavourful) and a lot of coconut (the Goan in me went nuts!). By day two in the country I was in ecstasy and it is the food that makes me feel like hopping on the plane and heading back. I’m serious!

Anyway, while certain food may have suited me better than others, I’m going to talk about the entire span of Sri Lankan cuisine that we indulged in the two weeks that we backpacked across the country.

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The Sri Lankan Cuisine

It is very hard to describe the Sri Lankan cuisine in a single paragraph. Many people will narrow it down to rice and curry. True enough rice and curry seems to be the popular meal but to just say that would be an injustice. Food in Sri Lanka is very diverse.

We quickly learnt that the Sri Lankans eat different food at different times. What is served for breakfast isn’t usually served for lunch or dinner or tea. For example, string hoppers are popular breakfast meals where as hoppers are eaten for dinner or tea.

Rice is mostly an afternoon affair. One thing that you will quickly learn is that coconut is the key ingredient in almost everything. Another thing is that there is no such thing as a small meal in Sri Lanka. After the first few mishaps, we learnt that one meal was enough for both of us and we would still be stuffed.

As if that isn’t incentive enough, the meals are delicious and cheap with a cheap eat meal being somewhere around 200 LKR (I kid you not!) to an expensive one at around 800 LKR (At least that was the most expensive one we ate!).

Breakfast In Sri Lanka

There are a number of different types of Sri Lankan food that you will be able to get for breakfast. A lot of places will provide you with items that are served at popular western breakfast tables like pancakes, eggs, toast, jam etc. Trust me, if you look at the food in Sri Lanka, you can probably get everything you are used to.

I however urge you to try some of the local cuisine too. It is intriguing, and you probably will fall in love with it. Unfortunately for us we were usually too full with dinner the previous night to eat breakfast on many days which was a big disappointment because one of our favorite items of Sri Lankan food is served only in the morning.

1. String Hoppers

String hoppers is one of Shawn’s favourite items of food in Sri Lanka.

At the top of our list of food in Sri Lanka is the String hopper. Made of rice flour these thin noodle like pancakes are steamed and served with a curry of your choice. Each string hopper is sold for around 2 LKR and you usually require 5 – 10 to start off with.

String hoppers are bland, so spice should not be a concern and are oil free. One thing that we found surprising was even though the string hoppers appear light and fuffy, they are remarkably filling. Talk about deception!

String hoppers are usually never found in the evening so if you want to try this out make sure you have it for breakfast.

2. Coconut Roti

This is one of the items of Sri Lankan food that you should try to eat at breakfast.

Every time I looked at the breakfast menu, I always noticed that one of the items would be coconut roti. I finally got to try it when we had our breakfast in Dambulla. The coconut roti is a homemade Sri Lankan bread that is shaped like a pancake and made of rice flour and coconut.

It is rather dry and is even more filling than the string hoppers. Served with coconut sambol the roti is an interesting eat. In some places they also have onion flakes in the roti. It is one of my favorite items when it comes to food in Sri Lanka.

3. The Rolls

I need to be truthful, but I don’t really know what they are called. These rolls are usually parathas (flattened bread) that are stuffed. Shawn tried one that had egg inside.

Folded versions have a variety of options ranging from chicken to fish. I found these a bit too oily for me, but they certainly were delicious. I couldn’t stop myself from tasting them.

Lunch And Dinner In Sri Lanka

I’m combining the lunch and dinner section because a lot of the food that is served for both is similar with a few exceptions which I will note down a little later. Talking about the main meals of the day, Sri Lankan’s tend to eat rice for both lunch and dinner though most prefer to eat it for lunch and have hoppers (will talk about that in a bit) for dinner.

4. Rice And Curry

The rice varies and can be polished rice or the more popular red / brown rice. I love the brown rice because it has a higher amount of fibre and is healthier. Just beware that it tends to fill you up more quickly than the polished version, so you can overestimate how much you can eat.

As stated by numerous blogs, Sri Lankan food tends to have a lot of curries. In fact, every meal that you order usually has an assortment of vegetables that may or may not be cooked with coconut curry. Sri Lankan food is usually spicy so if you can’t eat spice make sure you tell them.

Shawn and I had to keep telling them to up the spice for us (being Indian we love spice). Popular dishes that we enjoyed were beetroot, a delish pumpkin curry that we later learnt to make, brinjal, baby jackfruit (a great meat substitute!), dal infused with coconut milk, fish curry, chicken curry, beef roast, pepper beef curry, etc.

As you can see when it came to food in Sri Lanka, we ate a lot!

5. Kothu Roti

Kothu roti is one of the most popular items of food in Sri Lanka

Kothu Roti or Paratha is another popular item of food in Sri Lanka. Roti or Paratha is a flattened bread. This is then shredded and sautéed with a variety of vegetables and meat. You can choose to have a vegetarian version if you wish.

The one that we had was topped with cheese and was served in a traditional mud pot. A Sri Lankan friend told us that the word Kothu refers to a mixture and that certainly describes the dish well. While Kothu paratha is one of the things people will talk about when it comes to food in Sri Lanka, it is also some thing that you will find as snacks in India.

6. Hoppers

One of the famous items of food in Sri Lanka is hoppers.

One of the items that really confused me were the hoppers. There are string hoppers and hoppers and both of them look nothing like each other than the fact that they are probably made of the same stuff. String hoppers look like fine noodles.

Hoppers on the other hand is a form of Sri Lankan bread that is bowl shaped. It is thin and crisp on the edges and thicker in the center. I reminded me of a semi spherical Indian dosa if that is possible.

Hoppers are popularly eaten with curries as part of the Sri Lankan dinner and you will find that they are one of the popular items of Sri Lankan food that can be seen after dusk. They do use a thin film of oil when frying it but it isn’t too bad. Like the string hoppers they fill you up pretty fast! Definitely one of our favorites when it comes to food in Sri Lanka.

7. Deviled Fish / Prawns/ Chicken

Deviled food is a popular item of food in Sri Lanka.

This is another popular dish that you see on almost every menu from north of Sri Lanka to the south. It intrigued me, but I was rather scared to try it out. Shawn finally took the plunge in Ella. Turns out that the dish gets its name because of its fiery spice.

It is usually sweetened up for foreigners, so we had to tell them to make it the Sri Lankan way for us. The meat is deep fried and then sautéed with a variety of spices and vegetables. Not something that I would order for myself but definitely delicious if you love spice.

Snacks And Street Food In Sri Lanka

It would be remiss of me not to include a list of all the snacks as part of my post on food in Sri Lanka. In a way, snacks in Sri Lanka reminds me a lot of the ones we would find in India. They are plentiful, and they are sold by local stalls and hawkers wherever you go be it in the train or on the beach. We even had hawkers entering our buses at stops. Here are a few of the ones that we tried.

8. Egg Hoppers

Egg hoppers are popular Sri Lankan snacks.

This is a variant of the hoppers that are served for dinner. The difference is that an egg is cracked open and placed in the centre. The egg fries along with the hopper and the whole bowl-shaped hopper is placed on your plate. It is a tasty treat that you will find at any place that has the hopper pans at it.

9. Samosas

As an Indian I am extremely familiar with samosas and I wasn’t too surprised to find out that samosas are a popular Sri Lankan snack too. Samosas are basically wrapped goodies that are deep fried. In Sri Lanka we have tasted versions with vegetables, some with fish and have heard of those with egg. These popular snacks are best had hot and on a cold or rainy day!

10. Wade

The Sri Lankan wade are deep fried snacks that are made in a variety of ways. The most popular ones that we saw and tasted were the ones made of dal or lentil. Some of these were topped off with a prawn on top. To be truthful, I did not like these too much. The prawn was usually too small and too fried to add any flavour. It may have been that we tried them in a train but I’m not too sure.

11. Fruits

You will quickly learn that Sri Lanka has a diverse terrain and they grow a lot of different fruits. That makes fruit cheap, fresh and easily accessible. Fruits that you should try in Sri Lannka are jackfruit, mango, apple, avocado, pineapple and wood apple. There are probably a number of other fruits that you should try but these are the ones that we encountered.

Deserts In Sri Lanka

It would be remiss of me not to add deserts and sweets to my list of food in Sri Lanka. I mean a lot of us have a sweet tooth, right? Unfortunately for me, I always landed up eating too much. I usually had no place for desert. In some instances, I found that the deserts in Sri Lanka were as filling as a whole meal. Here are some of the ones which I managed to find space in my tummy for.

12. Banana Roti

The banana roti was scrumptious.

Banana roti is exactly what it sounds like. It involves a ripe banana which is sliced and placed between two rotis (Sri Lankan bread). I had a version of it which involved drizzling the entire concoction with liquid chocolate. It was by far the most delicious thing I had that day!

13. Curd/Yogurt With Honey

Yogurt in Sri Lanka is rich, thick, creamy and sweet. While a lot of the restaurants that we went served this, I only got a chance to taste it in the packaged form. Small yogurt containers are sold in the grocery store with a tiny packet of honey attached.

It is delicious and a great to go option if you want a light snack or meal. Some of the restaurants also serve it with pancakes. Sadly, I did not get a chance to try it.

14. Yogurt And Jelly

This quickly turned out to be my favourite desert when it came to food in Sri Lanka. My only regret was that I did not discover it earlier. The yogurt and jelly concoction is available in grocery stores. It comes with a red jelly on top of the white yogurt base. It is cheap and easily accessible. Did I mention that it is delicious?

15. The Caramel, Vanilla And Chocolate Ice Cream Bar

This is Shawn’s favourite!

This soon became Shawn’s favourite desert. No matter how full he was after a meal, he would trot to the grocery store and ask me whether I would share one. The bar was a lot like the popular chocobar except that it has a layer of liquid caramel. The tiny tweak makes the bar mouth wateringly delicious!

Drinks In Sri Lanka

There are a couple of things that you should try. If you are looking for the non-alcoholic versions then think about try the tender coconut water and the ginger beer which is really popular. The local alcohol is Arak and is really cheap.

The restaurants along the coast make a variety of cocktails using this alcohol. One thing that you definitely should try is the different varieties of tea that Sri Lanka has to offer. You can have it with milk or without.

I personally love the flavors that a pure black tea has to offer. If you it unsweetened you would need to tell them in advance. Sri Lankan tea tends to be very sweet.

Food In Sri Lanka: Tours You Should Consider

There are loads of food tours all over the country. Here are some iconic ones that you can consider booking online.

• Colombo: Flavours Of Sri Lanka
• Tissamaharama: Cooking experience
• Kandy: 10 Tasting of Kandy

Food in Sri Lanka is definitely a foodie’s delight. We loved the food so much that we actually took cooking classes in Tissamaharama just so that we could cook the food at home too. As far as food is concerned, I think that Sri Lanka is a paradise.

Have you tried the food in Sri Lanka? What did you enjoy the most? We would love to hear about your experience in the comments below.

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