Cycle 3 – Item 283
14 (Sun) October 2012
Seerfish White Curry Meal
2.5
by Taj Samudra – room service
in my room
-Colombo, Sri Lanka-
44th Conference of the Asia-Pacific Academic Consortium on Public Health: Day 2 of 5
- Day 1 (3.282 Murgh Dum Biryani)
- Day 2 (3.283 Seerfish White Curry Meal)
- Day 3 (3.284 Lamprais)
- Day 4 (3.285 Thali)
- Day 5 (3.286 Lobster Tempered in Spices)
In Colombo. Here to attend and present at APACPH44. Heading back on Wednesday night.
We’re staying at the Taj Samudra.
LUNCH
For my first meal on the ground, we went to a Navratna, an Indian restaurant in the hotel.
The food was good, though the professor who’d commandeered the menu ordered nothing but curries.
DINNER 1
Dinner was at Gold Dragon, a Chinese restaurant in the hotel.
I was loathe to feature Chinese food for GMTD’s first post in Sri Lanka, but the dinner party included a larger contingent of Korean professors, most of whom I’d never met, some much senior, and everyone seemed to agree that Chinese was the safest option for a gang of Korean fuddy-duddies, so I just went with the flow.
The food was pretty good, but I just nibbled throughout the service, saving room.
DINNER 2
Determined to feature a local dish for my first post on and in Sri Lanka, I got back to my room and ordered a secondary dinner for myself from the Sri Lankan section of the room service menu. And so it was that I had my first Sri Lankan meal.
The dish itself wasn’t particularly noteworthy. Apparently, based on this one experience, Sri Lankan cuisine appears to be very similar to Indian, particularly the style of southern India just across the ocean, only with greater emphasis on spices and chilies. The distinctly nonwhite “white” curry here, so-called because of the coconut milk, was so hot that I was sweating after a few bites. Seerfish, a type of mackerel known locally as “thora,” seems to be very popular, as is fish in general. At around 20,000 rupees (about US$15), including tax and service charges, it was very very pricey by local standards.
(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)
(See also RESTAURANTS IN SRI LANKA)
