Shri Annapoorna Srilanakan Restaurant, 290 Ballarat Road, Braybrook. Phone: 8528 0064

We wrote about Annapoorna several years ago – a short piece based on a single, solitary meal.

But thanks to a weekend Facebook post – thanks, Chee Chin Lee! – Nat and I front up for Sunday lunch to see what changes have been wrought.

There’s new management and a new approach.

We’re told a written menu is in the works and that at dinner time the full regalia of South Indian/Sri Lankan tucker as channelled through Malaysia is available – think idlys, noodles such as mee goreng, house-made rotis, dosas and so on.

For lunch, we can have a banana leaf meal from the bain marie … or nothing.

But that’s fine by us as that’s what we would’ve ordered anyway!

The routine is familiar – the basic (vegetarian) meal costs $9.50, with most customers adding protein as chosen from the whiteboard.

I append my leaf combo with chicken curry ($6) and enjoy my meal heaps.

All is most enjoyable.

The cabbage retains some crunch – not always the case in such places and with such food, where cooking down is often the norm

The dal is studded with vegetables and the eggplant is as silken as it looks.

Nat happily goes the fish curry ($7) route for his add-on – the sea creature, pomfret, is surrounded by okra.

I envy him his wise selection – it looks better than mine.