Best food to try in Sri Lanka: 20 dishes and where to eat them

Not one curry but a whole table of them: dhal, a meat or fish curry, a few vegetable curries, a sambol and papadum, all around a mound of rice. Eat it at lunch, when it's made fresh. Small local restaurants called 'hotels' often serve the best ones.

Flatbread chopped on a hot griddle with vegetables, egg, spices and chicken or beef. You'll hear it before you see it: the cooks drum two metal blades on the griddle. Cheese kottu is a modern favourite.

A bowl-shaped pancake of fermented rice flour and coconut milk, crisp at the edges and soft in the middle. Order an egg hopper and eat it with lunu miris, a fiery onion and chilli relish.

Little nests of steamed rice noodles, served with kiri hodi (a mild coconut milk gravy), dhal and pol sambol. A gentle, very local breakfast.

Fresh coconut ground with red chilli, onion, lime and salt. It goes with hoppers, rice, bread or anything else. If you only learn one Sri Lankan recipe, learn this one.

Red lentils simmered with coconut milk, turmeric and curry leaves. Comforting, mild and part of almost every rice and curry.

Rice cooked in coconut milk and set into diamond-shaped slices. It's eaten for breakfast on the first day of the month, at the Sinhala and Tamil New Year in April and at celebrations of all kinds.

A Dutch Burgher dish: rice cooked in stock, with a mixed meat curry, a fish cutlet, egg and sambols, all wrapped in a banana leaf and baked. Look for it in Colombo bakeries and Burgher-run cafés.

Crunchy lentil fritters topped with whole prawns, sold from carts along the seafront at Galle Face Green. Go at sunset, when families come out to fly kites and the stalls light up.

A southern sour fish curry, usually made with tuna and goraka, a dried fruit that gives it a tangy, smoky taste. It was made to keep without a fridge, and the flavour gets better the next day. Try it around Galle and Matara.

Lagoon crab cooked in a rich, dark Tamil curry with roasted spices, tamarind and drumsticks (murungai). Messy, very spicy and for many people the best thing they eat in Sri Lanka.

'Devilled' means stir-fried in a sweet, sour and spicy sauce with onions and peppers, and it's a favourite bar snack with a cold beer. In Negombo, visit the fish market in the morning, then eat prawns, cuttlefish or crab at a beach restaurant.

Young green jackfruit slow-cooked in spices until it's tender and almost meaty. A star of vegetarian rice and curry.

Fried aubergine pickled in vinegar, sugar, mustard and chilli. Sweet, sour and sticky, it turns a plate of rice into a feast.

A fresh, finely chopped salad of pennywort leaves, grated coconut, shallots and lime. It cools down a spicy meal.

Fish buns, vegetable rotis, egg rolls, patties and cutlets, piled up in bakery windows. You'll also hear bakery tuk-tuks in the evening, playing a tinny version of 'Für Elise' to tell people the bread has arrived.

Thick buffalo curd in a clay pot, with kithul palm treacle poured over it. Stalls line the roads in the south, especially around Tissamaharama on the way to Yala. Ask your driver to stop; they'll know the best one.

A rich steamed custard of coconut milk, jaggery, cardamom and nutmeg, from the Sri Lankan Malay and Muslim community. Look for it especially during Ramadan and Eid.

The orange coconuts sold at roadside stands. The vendor slices the top off with a machete and adds a straw. It's the best drink on a hot day, and far better for you than soda.

Drink it where it grows. On the road from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya, stop at a tea factory to see how the leaves are withered, rolled and dried, then taste it fresh with a view of the estates.