You will hear this spicy, heavenly dish before you taste it (2024)

The dish

Kottu Roti, Sri Lanka

Plate up

Make sure you’re listening in Sri Lanka. Don’t worry about the sights, and don’t even concern yourself with aromas. Just listen. “Ting, ting, ting, ting” – that’s what you want to hear. The rat-a-tat-tat of metal on metal, the crash of cleavers hitting sizzling-hot grill plates. There’s kottu roti nearby. This dish is a Sri Lankan classic: stomach-filling, tastebud-tingling street food at its finest. Kottu roti is a little like fried rice, if you took out the rice and replaced it with finely chopped roti bread. Cooks stand before a flat grill plate and pile on onions, chillies, egg, a meat- or vegetable-based curry, and strips of roti, before grabbing a blade similar to a bench-scraper in each hand and going to town on the lot. Ting, ting, ting, ting: the dish is chopped and blended as it fries, before the entire melange is dumped on a plate and you’re in spicy, savoury heaven.

First serve

Though no-one is certain exactly where kottu roti came from, it’s mostly thought to have originated in the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, particularly the towns of Batticaloa and Trincomalee. It was popularised in the 1970s as a cheap street-food snack, and a smart way to use day-old bread. The name, “kottu”, is a simplification of the Tamil word “koththu”, meaning “to chop”. And chop they do, as kottu roti’s popularity soon spread across the island.

Order there

Jump off the plane in Colombo and head straight to a kottu roti vendor. This is typically street food, and best eaten that way – try the popular market on Galle Face Green.

Order here

Loading

In Sydney, head to Little Sri Lanka – aka Toongabbie – to sample the excellent kottu roti at XDream. In Melbourne, check out the great Sri Lankan fare at Upali’s in Glen Waverley.

One more thing

Controversy! There are some in the city of Madurai – on the Indian subcontinent, in the state of Tamil Nadu – who believe “kottu parotta” was actually invented there. The dish uses chopped parotta bread, though there’s no evidence it came before kottu roti.

Sign up for the Traveller Deals newsletter

Get exclusive travel deals delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up now.