Tag Archives: Sri Lankan food

Thali, burger and chips

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Sri Murugan, 27 Watton St, Werribee. Phone: 9741 9656

Sri Murugan is a first restaurant adventure for Rathi and Vellayan.

They’ve been up and running for about five weeks, bringing their native Sri Lankan food to the party and combining it with your regular fish and chips and burgers, the ins and outs of which the previous, Greek management imparted to them before splitting and leaving the lovely, friendly couple to their own devices.

Based on our swell Sunday lunch, we reckon they’re doing a pretty good job of handling both aspects.

The place unmistakably bears all the hallmarks of its origins as a genuine, old-school Aussie chippery and burger bar, yet the menu is also festooned with Sri Lankan dishes.

We have a four-way bash at quite a wide bunch of it.

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I’m happy to let Bennie have his way and the lad does real good with his burger pack of one with the lot, chips and a can of drink for $8.

Unlike our previous outing with this style of burger, this one is a glorious hands-on delight, with real beefy meat patty, gooey egg and all the bits and pieces you’d rightfully expect.

The chips are hot and OK in an average sort of way, but the burger is an outright winner.

As Courtney opines: “Sometimes it’s just got to be a fish and chip shop burger!”

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Two vadai (90 cents each) served with coconut chutney are a delight – softer and more moist than is often the case, they’re liberally studded with green chilli. The masala vadai ($1) doesn’t impress quite as much.

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Likewise, a three-piece serve of idli ($6) goes down well with the same chutney and a portion of thickish sambar/dal.

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Rice and curry turns out to be a lovely looking thali.

The star without doubt is the lamb curry, which is coconutty, rich and delicious.

The chick peas are good, too, and have a similarly hefty chilli whack.

The vegetable serves – one of cabbage, the other a mixed concoction of zucchini, beans and carrot – are way overcooked but suffice.

Still, at $8 – and especially if the vegetables were replaced with a dal of some sort – this is a bargain.

In admirably curious spirit, Courtney and James get busy thumbing their mobiles to find out about kothu rotti, and order a couple based on this Wikipedia entry.

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The first, lamb kothu rotti, is the darker and heavier of the pair.

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The second, egg kothu rotti, is both kinds of lighter.

But both are damn tasty, stuffed with all sorts of vegetables and chopped rotti, and with a whiff of wok hei about them.

They are a very satisfying feed, coming across as something like a superior Sri Lankan version of fried rice.

We’re all impressed with the food, service, our ability to enjoy such a wide-ranging meal and the sublime hipness of finding such a cool mixture in the west.

We’d actually started the day meeting up at a foodie pub up the road apiece, but have no regrets about adjourning – based on a CTS reader tip (thanks, Martin!) and mutual gut instinct – to this multi-approach joint.

We wish them well.

Werribee, we’re happy to reflect, is becoming a happy hunting ground for us.

 

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Sri Lankan happiness

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Spicy Corner, 49 Dawson Street, Tullamarine. Phone: 9335 5650

One thing leads to another …

A nonchalant post about the challenges faced in securing a cool lunch at Airport West spurs a reader comment about some good stuff nearby …

Which inspires a visit to Tullamarine for much good cheer of the pizza variety, the story of which draws forth another reader hot tip …

So it is we find ourselves wending our way along a twisty residential street in Tullamarine, eventually finding the modest shopping strip – pizza shop, hairdresser, F&C, video shop, milkbar – that houses Spicy Corner.

What a surprise and a delight it is to find such an eatery in such a setting.

With its checkerboard flooring, plastic-covered tables and white, old-school decor, we surmise that the premises’ previous incarnation was most likely as a Chinese restaurant.

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Not so, we’re told – Spicy Corner has been in residence for a fabulous 15 years, and before that the property hosted and fruit and veg establishment.

Unfortunately, the $12 hopper meals we have been recommended are not available for lunching.

No matter – we’re more than happy to settle for the get-what-you’re-given mixed plates that come mostly from the bain marie.

Oddly, the large plates cost $8 and the small cost $7.50 – and a far we can see, there is little difference in the respective sizes as there is in the prices.

Our plates are the same, ‘cept Bennie opts for the lamb curry and I the chicken.

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Sitting atop a mound of fluffy turmeric-coloured rice are:

  • An excellent dal.
  • A beetroot dish I am excited to try – actually, really excited to try – but which I am a little disappointed to discover has none of that earthy beetroot taste.
  • A jumble of onions and green beans.
  • A small portion of a yummy eggplant number that seem to arrive halfway between vegetable dish and pickle.
  • A single, meaty drumstick of high flavour.
  • And a smear of sweetish chutney and a teaspoon of dried chilli.

The chilli aside, across all the elements on our plates the combined spice levels are high – almost too high for Bennie.

But that’s a small quibble – if it’s a quibble at all.

We’ve loved our lunches of simple, tasty and supremely cheap Sri Lankan food.

And we’re very eager to return for hopper meals all ’round.

Tullamarine may seem a bit of journey from our regular westie haunts, but on occasion the ring road really does serve sublime purposes.

 

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Unwrapping parcels, so exciting!

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Spicy Hut, Shop 6/35 Aspen Street, Moonee Ponds. Phone: 9375 2191

Many times on our various visits to Puckle St, we’ve wandered down the cul de sac that is Aspen St, adjacent a huge, unsealed parking lot, to scope out Spicy Hut only to walk away unfed and disappointed.

Each time there seemed little by way of any activity, so we didn’t even venture inside.

This obviously speaks to a lack of boldness on our part, because Consider The Sauce pal Nat continued to maintain he had been enjoying swell, cheap and delicious Sri Lankan food there quite a while.

So I am delighted to join him there for lunch, knowing for certainty his assertions will be well founded and we will eat very well.

They are and we do.

The tiny cafe space is rather spartan but offset by the charming welcome of the couple who run the joint.

The menu includes various options of the snack/street food variety such as rotis, samosas, hoppers and dosas.

As well, on three days of the week there are specials, with today’s being lamprais – so that’s what we have.

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According to the Wikipedia entry on Sri Lankan food, this dish is of Dutch derivation.

In Spicy Hut’s case, they are described as: “Rice cooked in chicken stock & served with eggplant, pickle, fish cutlet, boiled egg, choice of chicken or beef curry (all wrapped in banana leaf).”

With Nat going for the beef and me the chicken, our meals ($11) are delivered wrapped in foil and with papadams sitting atop.

Unwrapping the foil reveals mounds of steaming rice cocooned by banana leaves. The rice is moist but fluffy and quite nicely spicy.

My single chicken drumstick is tender and tasty, but really it’s the combination of all the bits and pieces that make this a splendidly enjoyable meal.

The fish cutlets (balls), made with mackerel, onion, potato, ginger and garlic, are delicate yet robustly fishy.

I enjoy my hard-boiled egg just as much as I do when they are served with biryani.

The “seeni sambal” sitting on top of my chicken adds a bitter element through the use of curry and pandan leaves, lemongrass and garlic.

And the dry jumble of eggplant, capsicum and onion on the other side of the rice has brilliant eggplant flavour.

Thanks, Nat, for revealing this lovely place to Consider The Sauce – I’m keen to return.

Spicy Hut is closed on Tuesdays.

 

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Curry and chips?

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Sri Sri, 151 Bay Street, Port Melbourne. Phone: 9646 2025

Like its genial owner, Keith, the heart and soul of Sri Sri is, well, Sri Lankan.

But his new joint also incorporates elements of quality fast food and fusion/hybrid outlooks.

So while we can and do enjoy some really fine Sri Lankan tucker, at Sri Sri you can also have breakfast or fish and chips.

Actually, Keith’s only been up and running for a few weeks so is still finessing his offerings.

The fish and chips are likely to go and greater emphasis will be put on … curry and chips.

That dish is real big with the English and Irish backpackers, Keith tells us.

But we’re here for more traditional Sri Lankan fare – and we really dig what is put in front of us at Sri Sri.

The term “slider” seems to be a bit like “focaccia” – it can be whatever anyone wants it to be.

So we’re not quite sure what Bennie will get when he orders the eggplant slider ($6) from the specials list.

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What he gets is a sandwich made from two flatbreads that appear to be close relatives of the spring onion pancakes found in many Chinese eateries.

Between them is an oily (aren’t all eggplant curries oily?) delight of thin aubergine strips. The curry has a strong, smoky and bitter flavour from fried mustard seeds.

But Bennie loves it – a lot.

“This is very, very good,” he enthuses.

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Keith explains to us that creating, and eventually crumbing, the pancakes that go into the crispy beef panrolls is quite an involved process.

He concedes, too, that the end result looks remarkably like a Chiko Roll.

In any case, as far as Bennie is concerned his roll ($3.50) – with its filling of beef, potato, onion, coconut and spices – is another outright winner.

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From the Curry Choices list, my Hot Chick bowl is funky and fun.

Four small pieces of chicken are less cooked-to-falling-apart than I am used to with Sri Lankan curries, but the meat comes beautifully and easily from the bones.

The bright yellow dal is decadently rich and creamy with coconut.

There’s two chutneys – one the familiar bright orange and coconut number; the other a crunchy, somewhat bitter jumble of parsley, onion, green chillies and coconut that looks like tabouli. It isn’t.

And the rice is fine and light, too!

It’s a beaut lunch for $10.

Sri Sri has limited internal seating, but outside there’s five good-sized tables with comfortable bright red chairs.

Check out the Sri Sri website here.

 

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Cinnamon’s Sri Lankan Cuisine

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Cinnamon’s Sri Lankan Cuisine, 530 Little Collins St, Shop 1, Melbourne. Phone: 0412 939 482

A fellow in-office food hound had enthusiastically tipped us to an interesting alternative for what has come to be known as “Curry Friday”.

So off I trooped up Little Collins St with a colleague to be really, really impressed.

I mean, how often is it that you’re in a food court situation and the air is redolent with the aroma of cooked curry leaves?

And where there are dozens of people happily queuing for a lunchtime spice fix?

We did good, but takeaway is only a takeaway, as good as this lot was, and only ever a second-best option.

As well, while ordering I’d got a good eyeful of the magnificent-looking eat-in platters being dispensed, and that made returning for a proper sit-down lunch a matter of some urgency.

Even if that required a train trip to the CBD on a day off.

On the upside, it was the perfect opportunity to fulfill a long-standing lunch invite from Andy of the world-famous Thaicentric website, Krapow. Andy works at this end of the CBD so has all the top spots nailed, and later gives me a mini-tour.

Turns out he’s familiar with Cinnamon’s, is a fan, loves the eggplant curry as my colleagues did the previous week and is definitely up for a lunch meet.

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Cinnamon’s, a CBD sibling of a more formal establishment on St Kilda Rd and another branch in Docklands, is pure food court aesthetic – adjacent to a Hudson’s coffee outlet, a noodle place and so on.

But more accurately, it’s better to describe it as part of a rambling warren that is a jumble of office block lobby, various eateries and retail services such as a newsagent, drycleaning and so on.

The surrounding area is very food-intense, with some places looking very appealing and others seemingly of the quick-and-forgettable lunch fix variety.

There’s plenty of table seating to be had at this Cinnamon’s, though.

Even better, the food is served on large, handsome, square, white plates.

And having seen the sort of quantities being dispensed to customers the previous week, I am well aware that my lunch with Andy requires no more than the basic three curries, rice and raita for $10.50.

I believe that there are specials of a more specifically Sri Lankan nature on some days of the week, but today the colourful options seem like a basic if very attractive curry array that look not much different from one of the Indian species. Perhaps there’s a lighter touch, more coconut and more dry curries, such as cabbage and potato.

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Andy goes for the $10.50 plate of chicken biryani, eggplant curry, beef curry and an ace-looking dal, with a dollop of raita on the side.

Andy’s choices make me confront a straitlaced belief about of Indian/Sri Lankan food I am unaware I have been harbouring.

For me, biryani is biryani and a meal in its own right, and so has no business sitting side by side with curries on a mixed meal deal.

(I can hear Andy’s snort of derision even as I write …)

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So I get a very excellent plain white rice flecked with herbs the nature of which I do not know, a dry potato curry, the eggplant curry and the spicier of two chicken curries. (And, no, that’s not a fly sitting atop my rice …)

It’s all sensational.

The spuds have the aforementioned curry leaves and red capsicum, some chilli and turmeric. Simple and delicious.

The eggplant is sweet, smoky and packed with the sort of real-deal aubergine flavour that most of its kind hardly ever are.

The two chicken pieces are fall-apart good and the gravy thinner than would be found in the northern Indian equivalent.

One of the topics Andy and I discuss over lunch is how for so very long the Eurocentric meal template of appetiser/entree/main course/dessert had, in Australia, been forced on various cuisines, frequently giving a quite misleading picture of how such food should be eaten … and, of course, jacking prices up, too.

In the past decade, we seemed to have moved on from that rigid sort of set-up, and Cinnamon’s is testament to the change.

We’ve paid $10.50 for three curries, rice and raita.

Getting a similar diversity in a more formal restaurant situation will likely cost at least $20 and even $30.

And not too far from where we’ve supped in the CBD, there are places where you’d be looking at $40 or even $50.

Bravo!

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