ExperienceCulinary

A walk through the morning market with the cook who knows every vendor by name. Rice and curry of seven small bowls — coconut, curry leaf, cinnamon, parippu of red lentils, polos of young jackfruit, pol sambol the colour of brick, a fish ambul thiyal cured in goraka. Hoppers at breakfast — egg in the bowl, string hoppers with kiri hodi — kottu chopped on the iron in the late evening. Lamprais wrapped in banana leaf. Watalappan to finish.

The spice gardens of Matale and Mawanella are where Ceylon cinnamon, cardamom, pepper, clove and nutmeg still grow within sight of the road that carried them to Europe. The Jaffna kitchen — crab curry hot enough to remember, mutton rolls at the bus station — runs to its own clock in the north. The south runs on king coconut and arrack at sundown; Galle Face high tea, in its own colonial register, runs at four.

A private dinner that travels with the tide on the south coast; a tasting menu in a Cinnamon Gardens townhouse. We open kitchens that don't take outside bookings. We sit you at the chef's pass.