Dining
Whenever any tourist visits any country, he or she would like to enjoy the food being offered by the country. In fact, food is an important part of any culture and provides a distinct identity to the country. Therefore, anybody visiting Sri Lanka would be interested to the cuisine offered by the country.
Sri Lanka cuisine is influenced by India as well as by other countries that had colonized country earlier.
Any visitor to the country should taste the typical curry and rice along with sambhols, kiritbath and famous Sri Lankan appams.
Rice is the staple food of Sri Lanka. Everybody in the country, rich or poor, eat rice. The extended coast line and spice plantations provide an abundant supply of coconuts and a variety of spices which includes cinnamon and red chilies. Therefore, a typical Sri Lankan food would always constitute of rice, coconut and mixture of spices.
A variety of liquors are available in the country, freshly tapped Toddy is very popular amongst the local people. This drink tastes the best in the morning after it has been freshly tapped from palm trees. Sri Lanka also produces some of the finest tea in the world and tea is also a popular drink in the country. Most people of this country would drink several cups of tea every day.
Curries in Sri Lanka are not limited only to meat or fish. They could be vegetable or even fruit curries. A Sri Lankan meal would consist of a “main curry” which might be prepared using fish, beef, chicken, or mutton along with a number of spicy curries made using vegetables and lentils.
The food preparation is strongly influenced by a combination of Indian, Dutch and Portuguese cuisines. Many tropical fruits like mangosteen, papaya, banana, mango, and jackfruit are available for eating.
A typical Sri Lankan family would eat three meals each day. They are breakfast, lunch and dinner. At breakfast, people would like to drink a hot cup of tea along with rice cakes. For lunch and dinner, people would eat bread, rice, curry with meat, fish, chicken, vegetables or lentils. To make their meal spicy, they would add a small amount of pickles or chutneys with their food.
Sambols, which is a spicy preparation made of grated coconut, onions, chilly, lime juice and dried fish, is a very popular dish amongst the Sri Lankans. While coastal people use lots of coconuts in their food preparations, people living in the hilly region are more influenced by Dutch and Portuguese cuisine.
This article tries to give some idea about the food typically eaten by an average people of Sri Lanka.
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