Vegetarian Food in Sri Lanka: 19 Delicious Dishes to Try
Sri Lankan cuisine has to be one of the world’s most naturally vegetarian-friendly cuisines. You won’t struggle to find options no matter where you are in the country.
And the best part? It’s all really damn tasty!
No worries about just having to have the meat option minus the meat, or sad salads with chips.
Think coconut, crisp curry leaves, punchy mustard seeds in fragrant curries with chewy breads and rice to mop up every last drop.
Eat it alongside fiery chutneys, fresh sambols, and carby fried snacks, before finishing off with sweets and tropical fruit.
The veg food is delicious and varied and feels largely healthy. We felt great eating Sri Lankan food for two months (with three months of South Indian food in between!).
South Asian food hits the spot EVERY time.
This guide will help you out with the vegetarian food in Sri Lanka to keep an eye out for on your trip so that you don’t miss out!
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1. Rice and Curry is a Way of Life
Served over lunch time only, this is a key indicator as to whether a place is ‘touristy’ or not. Rice and curry wouldn’t traditionally be served after around 14:00, but you can still order a regular curry.
The beauty of a lunch time rice and curry is that you don’t know what you’re getting; it’s a lucky dip.
Specify that you want the vegetarian options only and then you will be given a mound of rice with dollops of a variety of curries that they have made for the day.
Beans, lentils, pumpkin, mango, breadfruit, jackfruit, beetroot, cashew nuts, potatoes, etc. And you’ll likely get some kind of fresh sambol (more on that further down).
2. Kottu Roti
Chewy roti (flatbread) are chopped into pieces and stir-fried with veg and curry. There are many different variations on this with different veg, eggs, cheese even. Every single one we’ve had has been 10/10.
3. Devilled Anything
We most commonly found devilled mushrooms and potatoes, but if you see anything on the menu ‘devilled’ you know it’s going to be good. It’s sweet and sticky, with a little kick and goes perfectly with some rice.
4. Hoppers
Specific rounded pans are used for these to get the perfect bowl-shape. A batter made from coconut milk and fermented rice is swirled around the pan and up the sides with the majority of it settling in the bottom of the pan. This results in crisp edges and a stodgy bottom which is perfect for dipping in some spicy sambol.
5. Egg Hoppers
These are the same as a regular hopper but once the batter has been swirled around the pan, a whole egg is dropped in the bottom.
You end up with the crisp hopper edges and a cooked egg in the stodgy hopper bottom which makes it much more substantial.
6. String Hoppers
These are called hoppers but look and taste nothing like the other two hoppers mentioned above. String hoppers are small nests of rice noodles eaten with curries.
7. Vegetable Roti (Elawalu Roti)
We grabbed a veg roti at every chance we got in Sri Lanka! This street food snack is a chewy roti (a thin and flaky flatbread) stuffed with a spiced vegetable mix, usually shaped into thick triangles, and then grilled so that the outside is crisp. Honestly, these are the ultimate snack to grab on the go and you’ll find them everywhere.
8. Coconut Roti (Pol Roti)
A flatbread often served with curries or at breakfast with some sambol, coconut roti tends to be on the denser side and isn’t to my personal taste. It’s not unpleasant at all, but it’s much more solid compared to a roti, paratha, etc.
Coconut milk and fresh coconut are incorporated into the mixture, sometimes with onion, chilli and curry leaves also.
9. All the Sambols
A sambol is a kind of condiment served with your rice, curries, breads, hoppers. There are loads of different variations but the most common we came across were made with fresh coconut and good god are they tasty.
Pol sambol is the classic orange sambol – fresh coconut with red chilli creates the orange – or a white variation of the pol sambol is made with green chilli instead as the green colour doesn’t bleed into the coconut like a red chilli. Both are punchy, fresh, fragrant, and delicious.
Some sambols are made with greens or fresh herbs and will be very green. Another one to look out for it a seeni sambol which is a caramelised onion chutney with tamarind, curry leaves, cinnamon, chilli. Divine.
10. Ulundu Vada
These savoury doughnuts are made using a blitzed and smooth lentil batter mixed with chillies, curry leaves, and onion before being deep-fried. They are beautiful eaten with a coconut chutney, sambol, a curry, or just as a snack.
11. Parippu Vada
This vada has similar ingredients to the doughnut-style vada but is a very coarse lentil mixture instead. When fried, these guys could break a tooth so go carefully.
But they are crisp and delicious and the perfect bus snack. Bus stations sell tons of these little guys often served in newspaper, and if you’re lucky, they’ll also sell salted dried chillies to munch with them.
12. Dosai/Thosai
My love for a South Indian masala dosa with coconut chutney is strong! A dosa is made from a fermented rice and lentil batter which is then swirled into a circle on a grill and cooked like a pancake.
There are various fillings that can be added, or they can be eaten plain alongside any other saucy dish. A good South Indian dosa has super crispy bits and spongey pancakey bits, whereas a Sri Lankan dosa seems to be softer overall. A Sri Lankan dosa doesn’t quite take the dosa crown in my opinion but it is still delicious.
13. Milk Rice (Kiribath)
White rice is cooked with coconut milk until a gelatinous texture and then cut into sections. Often served for breakfast, we had this at a guesthouse served with seeni sambol (see number 9) and it was beautiful.
14. Roast Bread (Thati Paan)
Roast bread is a bread (shocker) that looks like one big thick slice from a loaf. It’s crisp and golden brown on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside.
15. Curry Buns from the Singing Bread Van
Back home, there is a truck that drives around the residential areas playing a tune and selling ice cream.
In Sri Lanka, when you hear the song coming from a truck or large tuktuk looking vehicle, that is the bread van! Like a bakery on wheels that drives around playing a tune to let people know that they are there.
Getting yourself a treat from the singing bread van is something you can’t miss. The veg curry buns are stunning; soft white bread buns baked with a spicy curry centre.
16. Curd and Treacle
Exactly what it says on the tin. A thick curd made from buffalo milk is topped with a dark, sticky molasses.
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17. Wattalapan
This jiggly but set coconut custard is sweetened with jaggery to give a rich caramel flavour. You can even find some decent ones premade at some supermarkets!
18. Coconut Pancakes
These are so simple but so tasty! Soft, thin pancakes are filled with a sweet and sticky coconut mixture. You could have them with tea or as a sweet treat after some spicy curries.
19. Tropical Fruit
Sri Lanka’s variety of tropical fruit blew us away. We would walk past a fruit stall and not even be able to identify half of what we saw. These are some of the stand-outs that we loved:
Wood Apple
literally looks like a rock and has a hard outer shell that you have to smash to get into. Inside the flesh is brown, fibrous, and it has a sour almost fermented smell to it.
I have seen it served with sugar to counteract the sourness. It is SO unique and tastes a little like super sour (and fermented) stewed apple. Sri Lankans also serve this fruit mixed up into a juice.
Custard Apple & Soursop
These two fruits are from the same family and have a similar look, taste and texture. A custard apple is a lot smaller and has much less edible fruit.
They both have a nobbly green skin has a soft yet fibrous white flesh with large brown seeds (that you shouldn’t eat).
It is like nothing I have tasted before. Beautiful and fragrant and yeah, I’m not eve sure what to compare it to – you have to try it! Also great in a juice.
Jackfruit
Jackfruit is huge so you’ll want to get someone to chop it up for buy an amount of it. The outside is green and looks spiky and the inside is yellow and sticky when ripe.
When I say sticky, I mean some people actually wear gloves or put oil on their hands before eating it because the stickiness can be so difficult to wash off.
The jackfruit has large pods with huge seeds in (you’ll want to eat the pods not the seeds). If you get a good ripe jackfruit, it’s deliciously sweet but not a fruit that gets juicy. If it’s juicy, it’s gone too far.
Rambutan
Rambutan flesh has similarities to lychees with a gentle fragrant flavour, but the skin is red and kind of spiky/hairy looking.
Baby Bananas
Sri Lankan bananas are the ultimate banana. The short fat bananas are so sweet and fruity that comparing them to bananas from the west is like two talking about two completely different fruit!
And One Sneaky Meaty Element to Watch Out for…
One thing to be aware of is that Sri Lankans love using Maldivian fish flakes to bring some extra umami to dishes, so keep an eye out.
But in general, Sri Lanka is one of the easiest countries to navigate as a vegetarian. From street vendors, supermarkets, restaurants – you are sure to find a huge variety of delicious vegetarian dishes wherever you go!
Writing this post and sorting through all the photos was tough because it has made me realise we need to get back to Sri Lanka for round four of all our favourite Sri Lankan dishes. I need me a veg roti!
Convinced that Sri Lankan food sounds like a bit of you?
Booking a trip around good vegetarian food is the best way to do it! We love to hear it 🙌
Check out our other Sri Lankan posts to plan the rest of your adventure:
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