Sri Lanka

Ask what Sri Lanka eats and the answer starts with this: coconut, chili and curry leaves power rice-and-curry spreads, hoppers, kottu and fiery sambols. Look for Rice and Curry (daily spread of rice with several vegetable, fish or meat curries), Kottu (chopped godhamba roti stir-fried noisily with vegetables, egg and curry) and Hoppers (bowl-shaped fermented rice-coconut pancakes, often with an egg inside). Sri Lanka’s staple format of rice with several small curries and sambols; roasted spices, pandan and curry leaf set it apart from Indian cooking. This atlas has 37 Sri Lanka dishes catalogued below, from everyday cooking to food kept for festivals and special occasions.