‘Vadai, vadai, vadai!’, the call is heard from somewhere up the street. Kids playing cricket in the dusty lanes stop their game and run back home to pester their parents for a few rupees. They race back to the wiry old man pushing his ancient four bicycle-wheeled cart, jostling each other to buy masala vadai, mildly spiced crisp fried yellow lentil cakes, flecked with roasted chilli and chopped curry leaves, without doubt the most popular Sri Lankan street food.
Vadai vendors are everywhere – at bus stations, outside office blocks, outside schools, anywhere people are likely to be tempted by the intoxicating odour of fried food to snack. You can have a plain masala vadai, or step outside your comfort zone and have an issu vadai with two small whole unshelled prawns pushed into the pattie and fried crisp and served with a garnish of finely chopped red onion, slivers of carrot, green chilli and lime juice. Down on the seaside promenade at Galle Face Green in Colombo they take it further and press small crabs onto the pattie.
Street food is still very much a part of Sri Lankan foodways. Any time of the day and well into the late evening, someone, will be on the footpath, in a park, under a shady tree, on a train selling what they have prepared in their home kitchen that day. It may as simple as salted roasted peanuts with their scarlet skin ready to rub off exposing the golden firm flesh or kadala, chick peas boiled till just plumpy soft and offered to you with your choice of lime, salt, roasted red chillies or chopped pieces of fresh coconut.
It can be a solitary pleasure eaten as you window shop – the sweet tang of a bagful of fresh sliced golden mango or pineapple and a sachet of salt, chilli, and sugar mixed together for dipping into. Or a group of friends might while away the time during the heat of mid-day under a tamarind tree in conversation drinking a soda or sweet fizzy drink and finger-dipping into their packets of achharu, a fresh pickle of any combination of slices of guava, mango, veralu (Sri Lankan olives), green chillies, pearl onions, carrot, doused in a fiery thin dressing of vinegar, chilli powder, mustard seed and sugar. Or they might just chow down on cobs of corn are sold by the roadside boiled al dente in big pots, leaning forward to avoid getting squirted on by the still hot corn juice.
Others look for something more substantial and head to the kothu roti stall to watch as the vendor skilfully wield two big sharp edged spatulas, chopping, scraping together and mixing flat wheat flour noodles with a selection of fresh leafy green vegetables and the diners choice of meat. At the next stall the cook is pulling and tossing a lump of dough till it stretches and stretches into a thin filmy sheet. He slaps it down onto a large flat griddle and spoons a good lump of minced mutton curry onto it. Then he folds it once, twice, more and more into a fat thick triangular packet ready for biting into.
The sweet-toothed aren’t left out. They can head to the woman selling fresh buffalo milk curd, thicker and sharper flavoured than yoghurt, served in the clay pot in which it was set, topped with a good pour of kittul syrup, a treacle like product of palm flowers, a flavour marriage uniquely made in the heaven that is Sri Lanka.
If none of this has tempted you, then there is one last street food that you will surely find hard to pass up, pani pol rolls, golden thin crepes wrapped around a filling of fresh grated coconut (pol) mixed with jaggery (palm sugar) and lightly spiced with cinnamon. Go on, you know you want one…or two…or…
