Sri Lankan Rice and Curry
The everyday plate: rice surrounded by several curries and sides, each cooked separately.
Sri Lankan rice and curry is the meal most Sri Lankans grew up eating. It is a plate of rice surrounded by several curries and sides, each cooked separately so the flavours stay their own, and mixed together to taste on your plate. It is the everyday food that tells you whether a kitchen really knows what it is doing.
What is on the plate
Rice with a dhal, a meat or fish curry, a vegetable curry, coconut sambol and papadam. The idea is balance: creamy, spicy, fresh and crunchy, all at once. The curries change with what we cook that weekend, so it is never quite the same twice.
How to get it
Ask what curries we have on this weekend and we will build your plate. We are a weekend kitchen, so pickup is from our Scarborough location on Saturday and Sunday, 12 to 5. If you are inside our Uber Eats delivery range, we can also drop it at your door.
- Order on Uber Eats for delivery in range.
- Call or text (647) 449-2924 to set up weekend pickup.
- Feeding a group? Ask about halal catering in Scarborough.
How to eat rice and curry
Put rice in the middle, a little of each curry around it, and mix a bit of rice with one or two curries per bite. Use the sambol and pickle to add heat and sourness. Sri Lankans eat it with their right hand, mixing as they go, but a spoon is fine.
Our ghee rice combos bring the rice-and-curry experience for groups of 20 or more, with up to ten dishes.
Allergy notes
Some of our dishes contain egg (kottu, egg masala, watalappan), dairy (yogurt sambal), fish (maasi sambal is made with dried Maldives fish) and nuts (green pea cashew curry). If anyone has an allergy, tell us when you order and we will tell you what to avoid.
White, red and black: the three kinds of curry
Sri Lankan cooks often sort curries by colour, and a good plate has more than one.
- White curries are cooked in coconut milk with little or no chilli. Our potato milk curry is one: mild, soft and soothing.
- Red curries get their colour and heat from chilli. Devils and hot capsicum curry sit here.
- Black curries use curry powder roasted until dark brown, which gives a deep, smoky flavour. Beef and mutton curries are usually cooked this way.
Around those sit the sweet and sour sides: eggplant moju, pineapple curry, mango curry and acharu. Maasi sambol, made with dried Maldives fish, adds salt and crunch.
Rice and curry for a group
For 20 or more, our ghee rice combos are rice and curry built for a crowd. The simplest is Ghee Rice Combo 5: ghee rice, any meat and two vegetable dishes for roughly $20 to $30 per person (quoted on menu and headcount), so 20 guests is confirmed in your event quote. For the biggest spread, Ghee Rice Combo 3 has ten dishes, including Bengal masala T-bone steak and hot masala chicken curry, for roughly $20 to $30 per person (quoted on menu and headcount).
Common first-timer mistakes
- Taking a big spoon of every dish at once. Start small and go back.
- Eating each curry on its own. Mix a little with rice in each bite.
- Skipping the sambol and pickle. They are what make the plate balanced.
See rice and curry catering, or call (647) 449-2924.