Flavour Profile the people and process behind four Colombo favourites

Food is as central to the experience of Sri Lanka as a game of cricket. As cricket is to recreation, food has transcended its functional purpose of nutrition to become, for many, a way of life. Some of the island's best-loved dishes are those made according to tried and tested recipes handed down over generations, cementing the special place food has held in people's lives over decades.

Transcending what often divides, this love of food binds Sri Lankans together, no matter which community you are from, your faith or where you live.

Groundviews recently visited some of the places that are known and loved for their delicious fare, in order to understand their history and the hard work of the people who have made them the culinary landmarks they are today.

Nana's at Galle Face

Galle Face is a great equalizer. As you walk along the promenade, you’ll notice snap-happy tourists, families, shy couples and schoolchildren. There are the vendors selling bubbles and neon bracelets, the isso vadei carts, the manioc chip sellers, and the small stalls where you can enjoy hot, sweet ginger tea.

Everyone shares the same space on the Green, whether they arrived by vehicle or using public transport, wherever in the city or country they are from. It offers the same respite to the children from the central hills on a school trip to the beach as it does for the individual who has just finished a 9-5 work day in the capital; there is no other place in Colombo quite like it.

The salt spray of the ocean coupled with the simple pleasure of biting into a decadent deep-fried treat is one of those experiences that encapsulate the best of what Colombo has to offer. This is perhaps why Galle Face usually tops the list of places to visit when showing around foreign visitors, or relatives from overseas.

The experience is best rounded off with a filling meal from one of the tents that dot the seafront promenade.

Toyna Nana’s has been around since 1987, according to Tuan Najeem, whose uncle began the legendary chain. There are now no less than five Nana’s stalls, lined up next to each other, each claiming to be the original.

Najeem’s day starts early when he purchases most of the ingredients that go into their dishes. He starts off at the Peliyagoda fish market and then stops at Manning Market in Pettah for vegetables on his way back home to Kompannaveediya - a journey of 27km to ensure that the food you eat in the evenings is as fresh as possible. At 3 pm, he’s at Galle Face Green, supervising the set up of the stall before the staff, including his son, get to work on the evening's service. Each one has been trained to perform a specific task, and they hail from across the island – from Kompannaveediya to Jaffna.

It is Najeem’s wife who cooks most of the meat and seafood, with the help of an assistant, at their home. The meats are then heated over a hot flame on order.

There is nothing quite like savouring Nana’s barbeque chicken – perfectly smoky and char-grilled, yet still somehow moist and flavourful, with the roar of the ocean providing the perfect backdrop; small wonder that this is one of the most popular orders. Najeem’s favourite, however, is the prawn kottu. He believes that Toyna’s whips up one of the top three kottus in Colombo, with Pillawoos and Taj Samudra holding the other top spots. This, and the devilled prawns, are dishes Najeem and his family enjoy for dinner quite often.

Nana’s is rarely shut; not on weekends or even during the rainy season, when few people visit Galle Face green. Najeem says he has trained a large roster of staff members, so someone is always on hand to take over and run the tent in an emergency. Even on a weekday evening, the stall is crowded, with a pleasant heat rising from the grills as the staff work like a well-oiled machine - their hours of hard labour in the setting up of the stall and preparations of the food culminating in a delicious meal.

The truly tough task begins at the end of the shift; at 3 am, all the staff must work together to dismantle the tent, pack it away, and to their homes in Kompannaveediya for some well earned rest before doing it all over again the next day. At 64, Tuan Najeem has taken a backseat from the daily meal service; his son runs the pass while he works behind the scenes on the business end of the operation that has kept Nana's a consistent crowd favourite over the years.

Jeewa’s Natural Foods

M P Jeewani Priyadarshani, or Jeewa as she is fondly known, has been serving up home-cooked goodness at the Good Market for nearly three years.

Jeewani learned to cook from her mother and her aunt. It was after tasting her polos beduma, her own recipe, that a friend suggested she set up a stall at the Good Market; and the rest is history. Starting off at the Diyatha Uyana in Battaramulla, Jeewani’s stall is now at one of the most popular at the Racecourse on Saturdays and by 10:30 am, she is already backed up with orders.

The stall is a family-run affair; her older sister rolls rotti over the fire, her daughter works as the cashier, and her husband - sometimes seen in his chef’s whites at the stall - helps with the service.

The spread of food at her stall – all Jeewani’s own recipes – takes three days to make. Many flock to Jeewa’s to try the polos cutlets, but she has plenty of other specialties. Among them, a Northern style crab curry with just the perfect punch of peppery heat, perfectly accompanied by the still-warm, crisp kurakkan rotti Jeewani’s sister has just rolled out. This is food cooked with love, and it comes through in the taste.

Her personal favourite remains the polos beduma – the dish that led her to the Good Market in the first place. While the food is delicious, what really sets Jeewa’s apart is the service. Even buried deep in orders, Jeewani manages to find a warm smile and welcoming words for every customer, recognising familiar faces and even remembering the usual orders of some regulars.

Jeewa's family moved from Kadawatha to Colombo when her daughter began her studies at the University of Colombo. Her dream is to open a permanent store in the near future. In the meantime she experiments in the kitchen, roasting her own spices for her flavoursome curries. When asked what she likes most about her work, she says without hesitation that cooking brings her great joy.

The Dutch Burgher Union

Founded in 1907, the Dutch Burgher Union was formed out of the desire “for a recognition of [the Dutch Burgher community], as having "an origin, history and character of their own." An informal meeting that was held at Lindsay Lecture Hall in Bambalapitiya led to an inaugural meeting at the Pettah Library Hall.

Over a century later, the DBU is a beautiful mansion on what is now Bauddhaloka Mawatha. The partially open-air VOC Café is a popular lunch spot - their refreshing homemade ginger beer and bacon pastries are known for selling out fast due to high demand - yet DBU’s staple remains the traditional Dutch lamprais.

Originally called 'lamprist' and 'lomprijst', lamprais are the Dutch version of rice and curry, though worlds apart from your average lunch buth packet. The traditional lamprais includes a mixture of beef, pork and lamb. There's also frikkadels (crisp meatballs), prawn blachang (a nod to Indonesian influence) and the sweet brinjal moju. These are then placed on a bed of rice that has been cooked in a rich stock. All of the components are then baked till fragrant in a banana leaf.

Lorraine Bartholomeusz has watched her grandmother and then her mother cook lamprais since she was a young girl; she now prepares the lamprais available at the DBU. With the passage of time, there have been adjustments made to the traditional recipe. What was originally a ‘breakfast-sized’ cup of rice, Lorraine has had to judiciously increase, given the Sri Lankan love for rice. Since lamb is hard to come by and mutton is too oily, her current mixed meat version uses chicken, pork and beef. While she makes a chicken-only version, she draws the line at adding a hard-boiled egg – a late inclusion which is a no-no among traditionalists.

Lorraine’s lamprais are her way of giving back to a place that has given her a sense of belonging. After independence in 1948, when Sinhala and Tamil were made official languages, difficulties arose around school admission, curriculum and employment opportunities as the Burgher community mostly spoke English in their homes. This forced many Burgher families to emigrate. "Even my family left to Australia - there were so few of us," Lorraine shared.

“At times, you can feel left out, or like a foreigner. So the DBU is a good place to gather and meet other people from the community,” she said. While membership was initially only granted to those of European descent, the DBU has since somewhat relaxed this rule; it has become a popular meeting place for people of all backgrounds who come to enjoy the space and the other treats at the VOC Café.

Bombay Sweet House

Dawoodbhoy Dosajee opened a sweet shop in Pettah in 1968. After a move to Keyzer Street in the 1970s, they relocated once again to settle at their current location in Kollupitiya. They were among the first tenants to set up in the area, even before the landmark Kollupitiya supermarket. The shop is now run by Dawoodbhoy’s son.

Bombay Sweet House has been open for 63 years, serving up treats like jalebi, boondhi and muscat (traditionally called ghee halwa). Over the years, they’ve added newer items, such as barfi, to their repertoire. A favourite order in the heat of the bustling city is the pink explosion of sweetness that is faluda.

The shop is steeped in tradition; the recipes for each sweet have been passed down from generation to generation, by word of mouth - nothing has been written down on paper, Quaid Johar says. Johar is Dosajee's grandson - he runs a sister shop, Faluda House, in Wellawatte, not far from the Kollupitiya shop his father manages. “It’s all trial and error and self-taught memories,” he explains.

Most of the sweets are still made by hand, although with the passage of time, a family factory was set up to cater to demand. This is where Johar himself was trained – he went through the entire process, with his family guiding him, before beginning his own shop in Wellawatte.

The Dawoodbhoys do their best to maintain a high standard, purchasing fresh milk, including from small time farmers who rear their own buffalos. Inflation has now made certain ingredients expensive; cashew nuts are sometimes even more costly than almonds, while high quality ghee is a rare commodity. All too often, food products have chemical additives which can affect taste and these too are avoided, even if they are cheaper.

The results – decadent jalebis, creamy barfi and sticky pearls of boondhi – are coveted by a cross-section of people. “It’s not only Muslims who come to us – Buddhists too often order boxes for pirith ceremonies, dhanes, or even wedding ceremonies,” Johar said.

It's quite easy to indulge in any of these dishes; they hardly ever disappoint in terms of flavour or satisfaction. However it's a lot easier to overlook the work that has gone into them. Cooking is a fraction of the work: the development of recipes and the establishment of the institutions that have brought us these delicious treats are the work of several hard-working, often unseen individuals that deserve to be celebrated.

Text by Raisa Wickrematunge and Amalini De Sayrah

All photos by Amalini De Sayrah

October 2016

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