Royal Hotel, Sri Lanka - Call of the Kothu!

Sri Lanka is a fun place to be at any time of day, but go for a walk at around sunset, and you will get to experience the accidental street festival that is dinner time. Before even stepping foot outside, we could already hear the clanging of the steel scrapers against the cast iron hot plates, as the local favourite 'Kothu Roti' was being prepared by every place serving food along the main road.

Kothu roti is a combination of freshly shredded carrots, cabbage and onions tossed together with torn up pieces of roti bread and a handful of fiery spices. It is Tamil for 'Chopped Roti', for fairly obvious reasons. No romance there.

Other ingredients like chicken, beef or even cheese can be added for extra flavour. Everything is thrown onto a hotplate and fried up, while being chopped and mixed with the large scrapers. The noise made by the scrapers has a musical quality to it, thanks to the the guys behind them using the whole setup like a cross between a barbecue and a set of bongos; banging out a beat using their enormous blunt lumps of steel.

The next thing we noticed was the lighting. All the roadside eateries were lit up with twinkly things pinned up along the fences as if they had put their Christmas decorations out to dry. Every establishment along the busy road was like a beacon, making them easy to spot from a distance. We chose the first one that looked busy and wandered inside.

The Royal Hotel restaurant was not a hotel, and in way was it regal. Inside was a bunch of plastic chairs around plastic tables, with all kinds of greasy bits and pieces being served on plastic plates which had been pre-wrapped in thin plastic bags, with the food served on top of that. The smell was like old burnt grease mixed with the scent of raw onions, coconut and curry powder; So it was making me hungry.

We claimed a table right in the middle of the mess and ordered a chicken curry, one chicken kothu roti, and a couple of egg hoppers. Hoppers are like crepes made from rice flour and coconut milk, cooked in a semi spherical frying pan the size of half a coconut. Our hoppers had an egg cracked into each on for extra flavour.

The kothu roti was spicy and very heavy. The roti bread made it filling, but the vegetables kept it from being too boring and sludgy. The curry went well with it, but was not too interesting in it's own right. It was one of those curries where you are not entirely sure which part of the chicken you are eating, but there seem to be sharp bones sticking out of every part of it. The curry sauce also went perfectly with our hoppers, which soaked up the flavour nicely, mixing with the very runny yolk of the egg inside the hopper.

We finished with some tea which was so sweet I could almost feel the enamel on my teeth dissolve as I drank it. I'm certain that a can of coke would have contained less sugar.

RECOMMENDED

I would recommend this place as a delicious, cheap and dirty option for anyone who lands in the airport north of Colombo; but don't worry if you can't track down this exact place, since there are about fifty other places just like it in either direction on the same road, and they all looked, smelled and sounded as good and musical as this particular little spot.


The bill (for 2, not itemized, just scribbled on a scrap of paper):
1 x Chicken Kothu Roti
1 x Chicken Curry
2 x Egg Hoppers
2 x Tea
TOTAL: 600 Rupees (Approx. US$4.70)

Restaurant address: The main coastal highway, near the main airport north of Colombo.

for exact locations of all reviewed restaurants, take a look at our map.

Here is a little bonus - A short video of the local chef slapping together some kothu roti!