What to Eat in Colombo: Hoppers, Kottu Roti, Lagoon Crab and Tea

Sri Lankan cooking is bold, aromatic and distinct from mainland South India: toasted curry powders, pandan leaf (rampe), curry leaves, cinnamon, goraka (Garcinia), freshly scraped coconut and cured Maldive fish give Colombo's dishes a deep, smoky savoury punch. Because every community on the island converges in the capital, you can sample all of their signature dishes between Galle Face Green and Colombo 3 and 7.

Essential street food and everyday dishes

• Hoppers (Appa) and String Hoppers (Indi Appa): eaten for breakfast and dinner, hoppers are fermented rice-flour and coconut-milk batters swirled inside a small deep wok so the edges turn paper-crisp while the centre stays soft. Order a plain hopper alongside an egg hopper and spoon in fiery red onion-and-chilli lunu miris and freshly grated coconut pol sambol. Finish with a sweet hakuru appa pooled with palm jaggery and coconut cream.
• Kottu Roti: you will hear kottu down Colombo streets after dusk before you see it: cooks use two metal blades to rhythmically chop flaky godamba roti flatbread on a hot iron griddle with vegetables, egg, chicken or cheese and aromatic curry gravy.
• Isso Vade on Galle Face Green: as the sun sinks into the Indian Ocean along the Galle Face seawall, order crisp deep-fried red lentil patties topped with whole shell-on prawns, doused in spicy onion-chilli vinegar.
• Rice and Curry (and Dutch Burgher Lamprais): a central mound of red or white rice surrounded by small bowls of yellow lentil parippu (dhal), tangy jackfruit (polos), dark roasted pork or fish curry, gotu kola herbal salad and crunchy papadum. Also seek out lamprais: stock-boiled rice packed with mixed meat curry, aubergine moju, shrimp blachan and frikkadel meatballs, wrapped in banana leaf and baked at spots like the Dutch Burgher Union in Colombo 4.

Lagoon mud crab, short eats and pure Ceylon tea

Sri Lanka's mangrove lagoons produce prized giant mud crabs, celebrated at Ministry of Crab inside the restored 17th-century Old Dutch Hospital in Fort for garlic-chilli crab and pepper crab (reserve ahead, or try fiery northern Jaffna crab curry in Wellawatte and Kollupitiya). Between meals, stop for bakery "short eats" (fish cutlets, mutton rolls and vegetable rotis) with a pot of single-estate Ceylon tea from Nuwara Eliya, Dimbula or Uva.