Meal #31 - Sri Lanka

The island nation of Sri Lanka has long had connotations of mystery and delight. Its old Arabic name – Sarandib, or Serendip – has even given us the word “serendipity” for the random discovery of something wonderful. It wasn’t complete chance that we ended up in Northcote looking for a Sri Lankan meal on Saturday night, but we did make a wonderful discovery nonetheless.

Sigiri
Sri Lankan Cuisine
338 High Street
Northcote, 3070

High Street in Northcote is rapidly growing as a restaurant strip, with a new eatery seeming to open up every time you blink. Sigiri has been there longer than most and is a popular Northcote haunt. Although it was quiet when we arrived, one of the first things we noticed was that every single table was reserved. The arrival of our own team of eight – this week including Rami, Caroline, Ruvinda, Dylan, Nick, Naomi, Sai and Marty – was just the beginning of a steady influx of merry diners.

The dining room was cosy and decorated in warm colours with tasteful touches of Sinhalese art – here a bird mask on a red brick wall, there a window decorated with the lion from the Lankan flag. The table settings were laid out with remarkable attention to detail. Water jugs and pre-filled glasses were there in advance and the gleaming cutlery had been arranged with mathematical precision. We were greeted by staff as friendly as they were professional.

In the middle of all this was… a bain marie. We exchanged glances. What was a bain marie, the ubiquitous symbol of cheap and greasy takeaways, doing amidst the trappings of a refined a la carte restaurant? Its presence was perplexing, like finding an elephant inside a house. We’d encountered our share of bain maries on our culinary odyssey and they’d seldom boded well.

This was no ordinary bain marie however. Sigiri, as it turned out, does a la carte meals most nights but on Friday and Saturday lays on a lavish self-serve all-you-can-eat banquet. With due warning to the staff that in our case they might regret those words – “all you can eat” - we set to with gusto.

The Meal:

It was hard to know where to start, with a spread of curries, rice, breads, fried snacks and the assorted pickles, or sambols, characteristic of Sri Lankan cuisine. Many of us started with these, treating them as entrees, although in Sri Lanka the sambols would normally be served as an accompaniment with the main dishes.

The sambols themselves were highly varied, comprising everything from raita to chunky mango chutney to dry chutneys based on coconut or caramelised onion and flavoured with lime, ginger, shrimps or Maldive fish. We didn’t always know exactly what was in them but we enjoyed them immensely. They could be sopped up with one of two breads, either the circular pol roti, a dense bread made with coconut, or godamba roti, a flat bread essentially the same as Indian naan.

Also on offer were vadai, or lentil fritters. We had encountered these the previous week in South India, where they were like lentil donuts, but these ones were smaller, crispier and tastier. They got wolfed down in large quantities along with the fish “cutlets”, which were deep fried balls of spiced tuna and potato.

The centrepiece of any Sri Lankan meal is of course the curries and our banquet had a good selection of these. There was a rich lamb curry, a yellow fish curry and spicy marinated chicken thighs. The lamb was particularly popular, drawing diners back for seconds. There was also kaju hodi, a cauliflower and cashew dish in which the cashew nuts had been beautifully softened in a mild yellow curry sauce, and a curry made with jackfruit. Last time we encountered jackfruit, several of our diners found its unusual texture challenging but there were no such problems with this skilfully prepared and flavoursome dish. Also on the vegetarian menu were snakebeans in spicy sauce and batu pehi, a particularly tasty dish made with charred eggplant. There were two types of rice to choose from – plain steamed rice or spiced (and slightly sweet) buriyani rice.

Rounding out our cultural experience were Sri Lanka’s famous “hoppers”. Hoppers (in Sinhalese appa) are crispy pancakes, made with rice flour and coconut milk, and cooked in a rounded pan so they come out basket-shaped. They weren’t available on the bain marie but could be ordered separately and brought to the table fresh. We had both plain hoppers and egg hoppers, which had a fried egg at the bottom, runny enough to be good for dipping.

By the end of this banquet, not all diners had room for dessert. Those who did (or who soldiered on anyway) had a taste of another Sri Lankan signature dish – Love Cake. A semolina cake made with pumpkin preserve and chunks of cashew, flavoured with cardamom and almond essence, this was thick and intensely sweet. It was served in suitably small portions with fresh fruit salad.

Drinks:

Sri Lanka is of course particularly famous for its tea and coffee, both of which were offered on the menu along with lassis and the usual run of beers, wines and so forth. In the search for authentic regional cuisine, though, we tried a Sri Lankan specialty – divul. This cold drink is made with milk, ice cream and the “cream” of wood apple. This is a fruit indigenous to southern Asia, and also goes by imaginative names like “curd fruit” and “pomme d’elephant”. When we asked about it, the waiter, in an outstanding display of helpfulness, went to the kitchen to bring back a can with pictures of the fruit on the label. As for the flavour of the drink itself, the diner who refreshed himself with a divul described the semi-tart-semi-sweet creamy flavour as akin to “an apple cheesecake milkshake.” (NB: It’s probably easier to go to Northcote and get a divul rather than trying to recreate this particular flavour combination.)

The Verdict:

It’s official. Best. Bain. Marie. Ever!

There are some meals which, when you're finished eating, make you wish you weren’t full so you could go back and eat more. This was one of those. From the arrays of sambols to the curries rich to the hot crispy hoppers, everything was pitch perfect. The $25 fro the banquet is the best $25 you’ll spend this side of Colombo.

Note to anyone wishing to install a bain marie in their restaurant - this is how you do it, with varied dishes in comparatively small servings, regularly refreshed so that nothing ever runs out or has a chance to go cold. The bain marie is a brief staging point between the kitchen and the table, not a long-term storage facility. At Sigiri, not only was this done well but the self-serve model actually seemed better suited to the style of cooking than table service would have. How else would you get to sample the full range of sambols, or restock on vadais? Given the quality of the food and the excellence of service, though, we certainly wouldn’t hesitate to drop in on a weeknight for an a la carte meal either.


Some of our diners were well versed in Lankan cuisine already but those of us new to it were pleasantly surprised at how distinctive a culinary style it was. There were elements familiar to both Indian and Indochinese cooking, as well as completely unique tastes. All in all, it is something of a shame that Lankan cuisine has not received much attention in Australia. When people think of Sri Lanka, they are more likely to think of fine tea than food. As we discovered at Sigiri, though, it is certainly worth staying for more than a drink.