Sri Lankan breakfast explained, from hoppers to curd

A Sri Lankan breakfast is built on rice and coconut: hoppers, string hoppers, milk rice or roti, with a fresh sambol beside them and curd with treacle to finish. Here is what each one is and how to eat it, and which of them we cook at Ohana, with the prices.

What are hoppers and string hoppers?

A hopper is a thin pancake in the shape of a bowl. The batter is rice flour and coconut milk, left to ferment, and it is cooked in a small deep pan so that the edge turns crisp and the middle stays soft.

An egg hopper has an egg cooked in the middle. You tear the crisp edge and use it to scoop the yolk and a little sambol. Hoppers are eaten at breakfast and again in the evening, and they are at their finest straight from the pan, so they are a dish to eat where they are made.

String hoppers share the name, but the dish is different. They are rice noodles. A dough of rice flour is pressed through a mould into thin strings, laid in small flat nests and steamed.

You take three or four nests, pour over a mild coconut milk gravy called kiri hodi, add a spoon of dhal and a spoon of sambol, and mix it all with your fingers. Nothing here is fried, and the whole plate is soft and light. Many Sri Lankans eat it for breakfast and for dinner.

What is milk rice, and why is it eaten on special days?

Milk rice, kiribath in Sinhala, is rice cooked in coconut milk until it is thick, then pressed flat and cut into diamonds or squares. It appears to be a dish of this island alone.

It is the food of beginnings. Kiribath is the first meal of the Sinhalese New Year, it is eaten on the first day of each month, and it is on the table at weddings and when a baby takes its first solid food. Most often it comes with lunu miris, a sharp relish of onion, chilli, salt and lime. There is a sweet way too, where the rice is filled with coconut cooked in jaggery.

What are pol sambol and roti?

Pol sambol is the taste that ties the breakfast together. It is freshly grated coconut ground with shallots, dried chilli, lime juice and salt, traditionally on a flat stone with a stone roller. Many cooks add Maldive fish, a dried tuna. It is served at room temperature beside rice, hoppers and string hoppers. It can be hot. Take a little first.

Pol roti is a flatbread with grated coconut worked into the dough, sometimes with chopped green chilli and onion. It is thicker and firmer than other rotis, a meal more than a side, and it is eaten with curry, sambol or lunu miris.

Why curd and treacle at the end?

Because after chilli, something cool and sour is welcome. Sri Lankan curd is a thick yoghurt, traditionally made from buffalo milk and set in clay pots.

Over it goes kithul treacle, the dark syrup boiled down from the sap of the kithul palm. The curd is sour, the treacle tastes of caramel, and together they are the island's simplest dessert. It is as good at eight in the morning as after dinner.

Which Sri Lankan breakfasts do we serve at Ohana?

We say it plainly: we do not make hoppers, string hoppers, pol sambol or roti. For those, ask your guesthouse where to find them fresh. Most hosts are glad to send you to the place they go themselves. What our kitchen does cook is this:

• Milk Rice, 1,850 LKR. Red rice cooked in coconut cream with rampa, the pandan leaf, hiding a layer of caramelised coconut inside. It is served with banana and toasted nuts. This is the sweet way, not the one with lunu miris.
• Sri Lankan Omelette, 2,400 LKR. Eggs gold with turmeric, folded with red onion, green chilli and karapincha, the curry leaf. It comes hot with toasted sourdough. This one is spicy.
• Legume Breakfast, 2,400 LKR. Warm mung beans and chickpeas with rice, grated coconut, a fresh lunu miris of onion, chilli and lime, and our green chimichurri. A Sri Lankan morning made only from plants. Spicy.
• Papaya Curd Bowl, 2,300 LKR. Thick, gently sour buffalo curd in half a papaya, with our granola, coconut, lime and mint, and kithul treacle.
• Mango Lassi, 1,900 LKR. Sri Lankan curd and ripe mango, blended cold with a ribbon of kithul.
• Kithul Waffles, 2,100 LKR, and American Pancakes, 2,400 LKR. Both come with kithul treacle in place of maple. Our kithul comes from Badulla, near Ella.
• Ceylon Tea, 700 LKR. The island's black tea in a warmed pot, with ginger, cardamom, a cinnamon stick or a splash of milk if you like.

Food at Ohana is not spicy unless the dish says so. Beside these there are breakfasts from other countries, which you can read about in shakshuka and breakfasts from the world, and the island's fruit, in smoothie bowls and the fruit of Sri Lanka.

How do you eat it all?

With the right hand, if you want to do as the island does. Mix a little of everything on the plate, so that each mouthful has rice, something wet and something sharp. Start with less sambol than you think. And finish with the curd.

All our morning plates are on the page for breakfast and brunch near Hiriketiya.

Good to know

• Breakfast is served from 08:00 to 11:00, every day. Lunch and dinner follow from 11:00 to 21:00.
• We are at Turtle Beach, Dikwella, less than five minutes by road from Hiriketiya.
• Prices are in LKR, plus a 10% service charge.
• The full menu marks every spicy dish and lists the allergens. The Milk Rice is served with nuts.
• Filtered water is on the house.