Great recommendations, thanks Sionhan. If we make it back I’ll come ckeck out those restaurants. It is such a shame that most places where you could sit and enjoy the view just don’t get it.

We’ve had all of the above, they’re great, ( don’t like milk rice) but we had to have our own chef to get them We used a couple of villas, cheap and expensive, that offered this – more like home cooking – fantastic. We actually have a jackfruit tree in our garden here in Australia, I can knock up a mean Sri Lankan style jackfruit curry. You just can’t find simple daily food, that’s actually Sri Lankan it in the restaurants usually. Instead you’ll see Chow Mein and so on. I don’t know why they do this, probably for speed, convenience, low cost and there being no skill in cooking it. By restaurant I mean – a place where you eat 3 times a day every day – as travellers we eat all of our meals in restaurants, for months and years at a time. That sort of food, where you don’t want anything fancy, is just hard to track down. I think you’re getting confused about that. We don’t go to a restaurant for a treat, we go to feed ourselves. I would argue with you that $16 is still very, very expensive where you can eat like a king all over Asia – most of South East Asia – India – for just a couple of dollars. Likewise most parts of Europe, I could get something better for that money. Coffee is bad in a lot of countries and we don’t expect to find good coffee everywhere, I just mention it in passing because readers will want to know what the coffee situation is. A lot of people hate Nescafe – why would you mention that stuff? But if it’s available I’ll take it over no cofee or – the worst thing on the planet – instant coffee with added sugar and milk powder – ugg. I’m also well used to Sri Lankan coffee, it’s OK, just the tea is better, I like tea. You mention Mc Dolalds, a Big Mac and fries is well under $16, so I don’t know what you mean sorry. Also the above was not a good restaurant, it was a beach shack. Why are you trying to compare every day food to fine dining or fast food? I just don’t know where you’re coming from with that, my apologies for not understanding. In Australia we pay a fortune for fruit and vegetables, the same can’t be said for Sri Lanka so you just can’t compare like that. The meal above looks good but it was terrible, badly executed, poor quality. I love Sri Lankan food, absolutely adore it, it’s just diffincult to track down sometimes. So difficult that after an hour of wandering we did, more than once, end up with cheese triangles and crackers. I appreciate that it’s not Thailand or Vietnam where the food culture revolves around good, street food aimed at locals, it’s Sri Lanka, not Thailand. But travellers like us will find our experiences useful, hopefully learn by our mistakes and put some reasearch into where to eat. Wouldn’t it be lovely if you could just sit down at any beach restaurant and order a good bowl of dal or egg curry, pay a dollar or three, enjoy a Lion beer at sunset and be happy, rather than being faced with chow mein. Maybe things have improved in the last few years, I do hope so.

I think I actually specifically mention the Jaffna supermarket above. Well done for finding better food. Every time we’ve been we’ve struggled. In Ella there was a nice little place on the main street with good hoppers and Indian style thalis, but we generally find having to pre organise breakfasts and meals at home stays far too restrictive, plus we want to go out, not stay in.They often want you to order well in advance, day before for breakfast and we often just can’t do that, nor do we want to do that. Also homestays aren’t for us, I like my own space. Traditional Sri Lankan hotels ( restaurants) are pretty thin on the ground, we’ve only managed to find them in places where there are very, very few tourists and the food was never too great..kotu roti, buffet curries. I wouldn’t have a samosa for dinner. We might grab one if we were busy, or a veg roti, and often do. But in the evening I think I’d prefer something on a plate, a sit down and a beer. I’ve not really had one that was honestly good, with the exception of that great place in Mirissa where we always used to get breakfasts and one back street one in Hikkaduwa that we walked miles to find. But look, one person thinks KFC os good, another wants steak, another wants a bowl of dal. I’m in the dal camp, and I, all 4 of us, really, really struggle in Sri Lanka. But that’s for chiming in and taking the time to comment. This post is about our experiences, not yours, so I don’t know how you can call our experoences ” not true” I wonder if you’ve been elsewhere in India, South East Asia, where good food is just so much easier to find, anywhere, sure, Sri Lanka has some fantastic food, I say that. It’s just finding it that’s difficult.