Sri Lanka Street Food - COLOMBO'S BEST STREET FOOD GUIDE! CRAZY Fish Market + Spicy Curry!

Welcome to another episode of Chopstick Travel. I'm Luke Martin and welcome to Sri Lanka. I am very excited to announce that we are here with the Sri Lanka Tourism Board. We will spend the next few days exploring this beautiful country and island. from north to south taking you through everything it has to offer in terms of

food

, we will explore some beautiful places, we will eat some village

food

, we will eat a lot of

street

food of course and today is our first episode so we are here in Colombo , Sri Lanka's largest city and the capital, this morning we woke up very early, we arrived last night and you can see behind me here, we are at the local wholesale

fish

market

, so we're very excited to go in, look at that, We have a full day to explore the Colombo plan, we will eat all kinds of

street

food, see some sights and I am very grateful to be here with the Tourism Board for an epic tour of Sri Lanka. so let's go into the

fish

market

and see what we see, so this is literally our first stop in Sri Lanka and it's definitely a jump right into things because this market is

crazy

, lots of friendly people, tons of seafood of course , they were on an island, so Sri Lanka is famous for its seafood of all kinds, this market is huge and very busy.

We arrived around 6am. m. and it is full of locals, a really great place to walk around in the morning and very friendly people, something very common in In this market there are people carrying buckets on their heads and carrying very heavy loads of fish and I am amazed, there are many types of fish, but one fish in particular that is very common here is the swordfish, so they are actually dragging the swordfish with big hooks and dragging them, but not just to the land, this year there is everything, the fish that sold in this market is not just for Colombo they sell it all over the island so this is actually the biggest fish market here in Sri Lanka and its wholesale like I said these fish are shipped by All the island.

Lots of friendly people. Everyone is interested in the camera. There are some huge fish here, like that tuna. I was trying to see if you could pick it up. Not even close. I wouldn't be surprised if that fish weighs hundreds of hundreds of pounds. This place is the real one. I love coming to places like this, full blown khals, just locals, no tourists here and the real way of life for many people. medallions is such a really cool authentic experience so we haven't actually eaten anything for breakfast and the fishy smell is getting a little strong so I think we'll leave now to go get something to eat so what? how about? from your first Sri Lankan market oh this is amazing everyone is so welcoming your friendly people are joking around.

I have a lot of fun here, but it's super fun. The sun is starting to rise. Good. We have arrived to have breakfast. I'm starving and I'm ready. To try my first Sri Lankan meal, we are in the breakfast restaurant, it is a very small place now, very local atmosphere and they are making some fresh egg roti, so I think we will have a couple of things , but this is definitely not our only breakfast place. Today I am very excited to be sitting down for my first Sri Lankan meal and we have a typical Sri Lankan breakfast, so here is rice pudding, made with steamed coconut milk and then served with Luna meters, which is a sambal of onion and chili, probably quite

spicy

. and a little bit of lemon juice here we have the classic egg roti that we sell you, we set it aside with a crack inside a very thin bread and then you fry it and then we have two types of curries that look so good, this one It is a fish

curry

.

spicy

and this one here is a dry fish

curry

and not so spicy, so first of all I'm going to try it.

I hadn't even heard of this dish before coming to Sri Lanka, so I'm excited to try it. and see what the flavor is and let me have some sambal and let's try some of that a whole mouthful not zomball it's an amazing battle rice you can taste the rich coconut milk flavor it's really good and it's actually a fairly dense rice. the sambal has some raw onions, raw chillies, it's definitely quite spicy, the stops by the exit, okay, let me try this egg roti, then dip it in one of these curries, maybe I'll start with the fish curry, this version spicy which is not.

Almost as spicy is sambal, but there is definitely a hint of heat and a bit of seafood flavor. Let me try this other one that is made with dried fish. I hope it has a little more seafood flavor than the other one. oh yeah, it actually has a very strong dried fish flavor, it's still very good and you can taste the coconut too. This is definitely my favorite and it's a lot lighter or waterier than I expected but it's still very tasty, very good with the egg roti and this is a unique texture for roti, it's very springy and almost chewy.

I was just told I should put some curry on top. This is really good, it's quite spicy and I actually think I have a chili on my nose, it's kind of stinging. I don't know how it got there, but I don't care because the food is very good, very good food. A great restaurant. The atmosphere here is local, it's just a small shop on the side of the road. and serving very traditional Sri Lankan food, so we will stop now just as I said, the restaurant for a herbal drink. I'm interested to see what it tastes like.

I don't really know what to expect, so we take our herbal mixture. The drink you can see here is quite thick and is actually served very hot, so it's actually half curry leaf juice and half another local herb called uma Quinn, okay I'm not exactly sure what it is I think which we will see later in the market, but let me try it, oh yes, it is actually more like a suit, it reminds me of a French onion soup, really the flavor of the curry is not as strong as I thought and I was recommended to accompany it with a little brown sugar.

Gregory is like raw palm sugar, very sweet, yes, very very sweet, we're right on the side of the street and his stall is really cool so he's got a couple of bats and he's mixing the drinks making these delicious concoctions and tons of locals are here eating this for breakfast or drinking this I should say so I'm going to try it looks interesting oh yeah Wow pretty good salty I wasn't expecting it to be salty but it is and it's like a soup. It's like a soup, almost like an onion soup or something good, onion or like a vegetable soup, it has a very earthy flavor and I'm going to try it with this very sweet Jaggers.

Thank you, it's quite hard, it's a very thick soup, it's hot. with a full stomach for the day of eating spices, it feels like a full meal, in fact it could probably be a full meal, so today we have one more stop or breakfast. There's another thing I really wanted to try, it's called grasshopper so we actually headed to Another restaurant to try they say Bobo or remember at the next restaurant this place is much bigger than the last one, very airy and we're having two things in particular and that's that idea and the hot egg hopper and the yarn hoppers, very excited.

To try this, it smells good, there's a huge pot of curry here that they're cooking in the back kitchen and apparently it'll let me try it. I'm a little worried about it being hot, like they don't know it's hot, yeah. It must be a lower look, okay, oh yeah. Wow, you take spicy green gold green jelly eggplant, Joe friend, so this is eggplant, so I was invited to the back kitchen and I tried some of the curries that they're making there, especially one. the eggplant that you saw me try there that was a curry plant a little spicy and very spicy eggplants nice and soft, very good food has arrived the first one, as I mentioned, the Hawker egg, you can see here the crispy outer shell and then that delicious fried egg in the middle looks like he actually broke the yolk and mixed it here's one type of curry there's another fish curry white fish curry and then here's something I'm really excited to try it's called example pol which is a coconut sambal , grated coconut mixed with chilies and a couple of other ingredients.

Here again, something I am eager to try in a big way is grasshoppers, edy Appa and a very interesting dish that I have never seen in another country. pretty much like that, so they look like noodles, they're actually made with fermented rice flour and they're meant to be eaten with curry, so I'm going to take one of these, I'm going to put it on my plate here and I'm definitely going to mix in some of this. add curry with the string hopper, so I'll pour a little bit of curry on top, so everything Matt, he told me that I should eat a lot of curry because it might be difficult to eat and then a little bit of all the sound. the ball not too much because it's supposed to be pretty spicy whole Matt and let me try that it looks absolutely amazing oh yeah wow that floating thread does an amazing job of retaining everything Korea really absorbs it it gets extremely saturated the curry It itself is not very spicy. nice is the coconut milk flavor once again and then that pol sambal is so good it has an exotic tropical flavor coming from that coconut and a hint of spiciness from those chili tastes so let me try this next. egg hopper and I'm going to try it playing alone.

There's quite a bit of black pepper, you can see here, which is a very popular ingredient here in Sri Lanka, kind of like a savory pancake. I'm going to dip it, I think a little curry here, dip this a little bit, man, I'm in heaven, hurry up, honey, this is so good, okay, I'm going to try the fish, the white fish that's here and I'll warm it up with some grasshopper and oh man. I can also see tons of black pepper. Let's try that so good that the fish is actually a little tough and a little chewy, but that's okay because the flavor of the curry definitely makes up for it.

When we arrived in Sri Lanka, I knew that was the taste. intense because they simply contain spices in a very delicate, almost watery version of what I know as curry, so it is extra rich in flavor, a real bomb for the taste buds, but I am full after that, but such a delicious breakfast Sri Lanka definitely doesn't mess around with breakfast, they like it spicy and tasty, so apparently there's a vegetable market this time we'll be heading to very close to here, what are we doing? a vegetable market and it's at the main bus station and train station so it's quite busy.

I think this is the center of the city, very busy, yes, so we are heading there right now, so we are in a traffic jam between the shops. and a lot of people and a lot of vegetables improve the banana in the really vibrant market so here's something that I just discovered that I want to try and then it's called wood apple so yeah it has a pretty pungent smell almost like that of the blue cheese, and definitely strong. you think blue cheese smells like a fruity shade, this market has to be just as

crazy

and busy, if not more, than the fish market this morning, lots of friendly people, once again, they are selling massive amounts of produce of everything, onions, avocado, mangoes, yes, everything.

There is a lot of very vibrant life, so we stopped at a small spice shop here and he gave me a cardamom pod. I'm going to try it, yes, almost a little tea with liquor, it's actually not as strong as I see. Here, this is the most important ingredient of Sri Lanka, coconut, and this is called king coconut. We're not going to try it now. We have many opportunities to try it in the future, but I want to try and see if I can get it. It looks like it's going to be super heavy, oh it's so heavy, so they finished us off at the fruit and vegetable market, really cool, right in the center of Colombo, but it almost feels rural, very traditional, so I think we We will take a short break.

Go meet up with my friend Reed and before we go back for more snacks later, okay, so maybe you remember Reed from some previous episodes. He will be guest company on our Sri Lanka tour for the next two weeks. I'm super excited. eat a lot of good food, but I guess now we're going to go out and do some sightseeing around the city, so come on, come on, let's make a quick stop at this building behind me, this is Independence Square , when Sri Lanka became independent from Great Britain. They built this plaza and this building behind me in memory of that day, so it's actually a replica of a building that is in Kandy, which is another city here in Sri Lanka, except the difference is that this one is built with concrete and the one in Kandy is built. mainly wooden so it is a beautiful building, many locals just relax in the shade here so we only have one full day here in Colombo, well tomorrow we have a special episode planned and we won't have time for sightseeing so We're trying to squeeze it all in today if we can, so let's move on to the next book.

Okay, we are at our next stop and this is called Ganga Rama Temple Buddhist Temple. I am very excited to check the phrase, our first temple in Sri Lanka, so We are exploring the temple, it is one of the main temples here in Colombo, it is like a complex that you can see behind me, it is one of the most beautiful temples the ones I've been to, with the huge yellow Buddha statues, tooThere's this whole area. here with the stupa and a Jade Buddha, there is a lot to see and just walk around barefoot, really relaxing, peaceful, this is a really cool temple, it's very colorful, there are influences of Buddhism from different parts of the world here, so it's very accepted. of all the different aspects of Buddhism, so we have learned a lot here and it is really beautiful.

Also, our

guide

was telling us that there are actually some Hindu statues here too because it is quite common here in Sri Lanka to find some Hindu statues in the Buddhist temple next to it. we're heading, have a snack now, what did you think of the Templario? It's beautiful, really great, but I'm really hungry. Now let's go eat something. Yes, now we are in Petit Bazar, which is a shopping street, a tourist area and there are some attractions like this one behind me, which is the red moss one. One of the oldest mosques in Sri Lanka and it is very busy once again, it is less peaceful than the last temple but the moss is very beautiful just look at the colors it is spicy chicken so we were taking a walk around the Penta Bazaar and we saw a small sales stall. some kind of soup is like congee, so it's made with rice and chicken and there's also ginger here, tons of spices of course, and there are very busy stalls with a lot of locals here and they serve it hot in glass cups, a really interesting preparation, it smells very good, oh.

It's a little spicy, that's it really, it's very thick and quite spicy, a little ginger flavor, the rice and the liquid almost feel like the same texture because it's extremely thick, that's pretty good. Matisse's curry leaves, actually, I think I have a curry license, wait a minute, yeah. I just packed a bunch of spices easier than I thought oh yeah wow that's really good we're looking for Lassie one of my all time favorite drinks fresh curd very sour great for the stomach. Searching the market, maybe we found a place here Isaac let's have it we are waiting for the curd to be fresh we are in a lassi shop they have run out they will bring it in about 5 to 10 minutes we are sitting waiting very good job the lassi is I'm going to have a magic cup, okay, okay, we'll wait, we're waiting for the car to arrive before the lassi, but they also have some samosas here, so we ordered a chicken samosa and some tomato sauce, so put a little sauce inside.

In the container here they gave us all this, but eat what you want and they will return the rest. What you don't eat, pretty good, crunchy on that side, lots of onions, again definitely curry powder. I have all kinds of spices. a bit of chicken but not for me so the curd arrived we have mango lassi so you can get all kinds of different flavours, the popular ones include mango definitely in banana but yes we ordered the mango let's try it it looks very thick and refreshing because it is very thick I can barely get it out of the straw hmm oh yes, it is sweet because of the mango, they should have put a little sugar in it because it is quite sweet and actually not as sour as I remember it lassi very soft quite good, quick, little stop for a nice refreshing lassi, not the

best

I've ever had but pretty good and I love the little refreshment stalls you can pop into, there are all kinds in our Petrova area, stopping at our next store, this is another sweet one. store They just told me that he is 83 years old and that we are going to try Fallujah.

We have the falooda. Now this is the rose water flavor, so there is rose water syrup at the bottom. You can see all that red in the background. Here is the falooda. The ice cream shake made with fresh milk on top here melts, it looks like basil seeds. I'm not exactly sure if they are and then this is something made with cornstarch, yeah, it looks like a noodle, so they told me that. I should stir it really well, let me stir it, look wow, that's a beautiful color, looks delicious, oh wow, actually, super strong floral flavor from the rose water and then all those little Chuy's in there, very nice texture and you can definitely taste the The sweetness of the falooda is like frothy on the top, but wow, it has a strong rose flavor, very very strong, nice and refreshing.

I think this guy loves rose water and the taste of roses because when you walk in, that's what you can smell. We tried a little piece of July B. and it tastes like this and it has an extremely strong rose flavor Wow, it's pretty strong, it looks great. I like this one, very good, no, it's very good, yes. I do it with a lot of snacks this afternoon, all kinds of interesting drinks. from chicken soup to rose water, but we are all pretty good, very good. I especially like that rose water won. This market is pretty crazy, it's almost sunset time, so I think we're going to go across town to a place.

To watch the sunset we have come to the coast here in Colombo to an area called Skull Face Green, it is a kind of beach but it is actually a field that is right on the ocean so you can see the ocean behind me here, there are many people flying kites behind. I the sun is setting there are all kinds of vendors you can buy inflatables you can buy kites and the waves are really breaking it's quite beautiful and we're cooling off after a long day of food it's a party down here people will be flying kites people are eating street food people swim it's quite windy and cool there nice it's a great way to cool off and hang out I guess a lot of local villagers come here on school trips and hang out on the beach it's a main attraction for them here in Colombo, so it's very interesting to see so many people here having a good time.

I'm with the chef here, we just stopped at one of the restaurants by the sea and he is making co2 which is like fried rice but with another rice they used roti instead, he invited me to come back here to try cooking it. He's never seen it cooked before, so to demonstrate, first of all, pay, of course, and then I'll try to add some chilli flakes because it's curry, okay, we've got our co2 roti. This is something he really wanted to try. A really interesting preparation as you just saw and it is a very simple dish.

They only use the very thin roti mix that we asked for vegetarian, so there are carrots and onions. green onion and then we have more onions on the side raw cucumber looks like a tomato here we have some tomato sauce and then back here we have a dried chili tomball and you can hear them going in the background cutting the CO2 let me try just that is really good. I love it so the texture of the roti is very chewy, it's not fried and crispy at all, it still retains a bit of springiness. There are definitely some chili flakes mixed in there.

I didn't even use the sambal and then all those vegetables were a little crunchy, let me try some with this tomato. I think it's a nice tomato sauce in the dressing, there's actually a little bit of smoke. Wow, the cars are really good, really Hardy and Definitely filling, it had a lovely restaurant right next to the sea with a nice background, a tall building that was really good, it definitely lived up to my expectations, that was the dish that I was hoping to try more today and I definitely wasn't expecting it. try to cook it myself, a unique experience, very delicious, so today we have one more special thing on the menu.

Let's try what's here, yeah. Wow, for our next place we have all kinds of different foods. and Mulyani biryani is good and silly, okay, many types, okay, my egg, fried rice, yeah, and then what you have here is curry and macaroni and Jennifer's cocktails for the article, it tastes good, for sale , swallowing trainers, not sports, it's boo boo, Scott's pie, yes, and lamb, lamb curry. annoying lamb fire this is lamb fire oh man lamb hyah oh wow yeah you got everything and brain monster brain lamb brain where's the brain lamb brain there's the pain Wow, yeah, okay, okay, I take this advantage and please fish.

Wow, really everything, what is it? is your favorite what is your favorite what everyone is a beginner Oh chicken masala chicken flour in chips and gelatin chicken cut into the chicken delicious chicken Roadside chicken Bob with chicken Karuma chicken curry chicken Oh later, oh, okay, you heard here first, yes, food market today Oscar Austin, thanks mom, as you just heard from the owner, they have basically every dish imaginable, all kinds of different curries, all kinds of bright oranges and yellows, it really smells good, especially this soup, This meat soup, it smells really good, yeah, and it looks really good, so I'm not exactly sure what we're going to try in total, but I know we're going to try the brain for sure.

We are sitting at our last stop of the day. Reid and I are about to embark on a journey. Lankan street food adventure, we have brains so this is curried mutton brain. You can see a big chunk of brain. Our

guide

to all of us here says this was something special we had to try and you can see it is a thick sauce and a big chunk. from the brain we also have the lamb's pie, which is mainly like the cartilage and the bones, the fat, so you might want to try this first or the brain.

I'm going to go for the brains okay let's go over the brain so we also have the rotis oh I will definitely have it with some roti. I recommend you do the same, so the last time I had a brain we were in Lebanon and it was really good. I also had the opposite experience before when we had one together, yes. together mje and Taiwan, yes, so I'm going to break a little piece. I think I'll just put it on top like this, creamy, super creamy, really creamy. This is my first, like the last time we did this, and I kept feeling wow.

It's like a very soft cheese mmm and then that sauce is so thick that they almost have a similar consistency in terms of flavor. I can't even taste the grain, maybe a little juicy ness, but completely texture, yes it's mostly texture, it's really about that. sauce or actually I'm just going to grab maybe one of these bones, okay, oh yeah, there's actually a little bit more meat in there that I picked up, strawberry flavored coconut, yeah, I like this brain that's really good, Yes, this is something very unique that I have to take a little more of.

I'm glad we got to try this today. Colombo. You can actually see the layers of the brain. There are interesting ways to go to bed. So now we all end the day with some tea that we haven't actually tried. however, here in old Ceylon I am very excited to try something real, let's say lucky, Georgia, oh wow, that is sweet and creates very sweet, but it has a deep flavor, oh yes, super, you can taste it, it's almost spicier and took it out so that it is very foamy on top. In fact, our guide was telling us that they normally use powdered milk, but I saw him put condensed milk in this or some evaporated milk, that's fine sir, so we got into a tuk-tuk and headed back to our hotel and that's the end of today's episode, what an amazing day to explore Colombo, the first day here in Sri Lanka, we have many more plans for you.

Make sure to tune in to the next episodes because we will take you to one of the

best

restaurants. in Asia one of the top 50 is called Ministry of Crowd we're going to have some Sri Lankan mangrove crabs very excited we have a lot more planned and today was just amazing it was your favorite thing we need for Humber's and I hope you can hear us okay, there's quite a bit of noise here, but thanks for watching, be sure to subscribe if you already have and like this video, leave us a comment below what you thought looked most delicious and we'll see you again. from Sri

lanka

very soon