Rice and curry, boiled rice with curried vegetable, shaped with spices is the typical Sri Lankan food. It can be served as lunch and dinner or sometimes as breakfast as well. Sri Lankan curries are usually hot and spicy, but demands for softening its taste can be done to cater tourists' palates, especially the Westerners'.

Sri Lanka endows various regional foods of which many are influenced by the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Malays, the Arabs, and the South Indians who have left their culinary characteristic. Sri Lankan rice and curry usually includes a variety of small curry dishes made of vegetable, meat, and fish. Chicken and fish is very popular meat used in curries, but beef and mutton are also available. In a meal, it must have an accompaniment such as parripu (red lentil dhal), mullung (ripped green leaves with spices, lightly stir- fried), and sambol (a mixture of grated coconut, chilly, and spice).

Curries in Sri Lanka are much hotter than those in India. More chilli and spices are added to flavour the dish. However, adjustments are made to this in order to suit the foreign palate. Should you eat something too hot, never reach for water as it does not help. Instead eat a mouth full of plain boiled rice, pasta or noodles, or better still, some cool yoghurt or curd (buffalo yoghurt) or even cucumber.

Curries are usually made with chilli powder, fresh chillies, cinnamon, tumeric, curry powder, curry leaves, onions, garlic, ginger and coconut milk.

Excellent fresh fish is found in coastal towns with prawns, crab and lobsters too. Fish is prepared according to various recipes including fried fish which can be ordered with a plate of chips and salad. 'Ambul Thiyal' (sour fish curry) is a popular fish curry found mainly in the south of Sri Lanka. It really is a pickle made from tuna.

Other specialities unique to Sri Lanka are hoppers which are usually consumed either for breakfast or lunch. A regular hopper is similar to a bowl shaped pancake which is crisp at the other edges. There are several varieties of hoppers such as egg hoppers which are made of the usual hopper where an egg is poached into its centre. Milk hoppers and honey hoppers too are delicacies enjoyed by both locals and foreigners.

Other unique specialties of Sri Lanka include hoppers usually served for breakfast or snack. It is a kind of flat pancake with crispy edges and soft middle whereupon fried egg or sweetened scraped coconut is added to make them more delicious.

When it comes to desserts, Sri Lankan cuisine offers a wide variety of them to choose from. Kevum or oil cake spiced flour and treacle and cashew-nut fudge. Kiribath is a made of rice cooked in coconut milk, usually eaten with sambol; this kind of dessert is usually served on ceremonial occasions such as wedding. Wattalappam, a Malay-origin-dessert, is an egg pudding. Curd and honey known as kiri peni is also good; curd is yogurt from buffalo milk, very tasty.

Fruits are also abounding in Sri Lanka owing to its sub-tropical climate. Mangoes, papayas, bananas, jackfruits, durians, rambutans, mangosteens, to name just a few can be found everywhere in local markets according to seasons.