21/05/2020

Spicy Lanka, Stoke-on-Trent: lockdown takeaway

Spicy Lanka in Burslem was my introduction to Sri Lankan food last night.

Unable to visit the restaurant due to the Covid-19 lockdown, I enjoyed a range of well-flavoured, interesting dishes from their great value takeaway menu. And I can’t wait until they open up again so I can try more.

LOCKDOWN EATING OUT

At the time of writing, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Britain is in a lockdown that’s not quite a lockdown. The Government recently signalled a shift by ditching the slogan Stay at Home in favour of Stay Alert.

Whatever that actually means, the result has been that many more restaurants are now offering a takeaway service.

Missing eating out, myself and partner ID resolved to order takeaway at least once a week from places we’d otherwise be eating at.

Last week, we ordered takeaway food from Primo Piano in Leek and loved it.

Last night, it was the turn of Spicy Lanka in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent.

SPICY LANKA

Open since Autumn 2019, this family run Sri Lankan restaurant seems to have got very popular very quickly.

Although, like every other restaurant right now, Spicy Lanka is not allowed to open for eating in, it’s remained open for takeaways.

I first heard about it from my Facebook follower Kara Johnson when she tagged me in her own glowing review back in December.

To be honest, I knew next to nothing about Sri Lankan food. But, geographically close to South India, I could see that its cuisine seemed to share much with that region.

Missing South Indian cooking since I moved from Leicester over six years ago (where I loved restaurants like Kayal and Shivalli) I straightaway added Spicy Lanka to my list of places to visit.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t got there when lockdown started so missed my chance.

But I certainly made up for that with the huge takeaway feast we ordered last night.

THE MENU

By all accounts, when you eat at Spicy Lanka, the staff are incredibly helpful in explaining unfamiliar dishes and helping you choose your food.

At home with the online menu though, I had to do rather a lot of internet searching to discover exactly what kothu, kasari, thayir and veechu were, as well as reminding myself of the once familiar idli and appam.

But you’ll also find dishes familiar from thousands of British Indian menus: korma, chicken tikka, tandoori chicken, samosa, biryani etc.

As you might expect from somewhere specialising in food from this region, the choice for vegetarians and vegans is extensive. Seafood lovers are well catered for too with crab, prawn, squid and fish dishes.

As we were ordering online rather than eating in, we got a 15 percent discount on the prices you’ll see on the menu. Also, falling outside Spicy Lanka’s delivery area, we got a further 5 per cent discount for collecting our takeaway.

Note that the prices given in this post are those shown on the menu before any discounts.

OUR SPICY LANKA TAKEAWAY

As you can see from the image below, we didn’t exactly hold back on ordering.

That’s because (apart from us both being greedy), trying a good range of dishes means I can get a more accurate view of what a place is like and decide whether I can recommend it.

We also knew that, with both of us at home right now, any leftovers would be good for lunch the next day.

SAUCES, DIPS & CONDIMENTS

One of the disadvantages of ordering takeaway from a place that serves a cuisine you’re not overly familiar with is working out which of the array of pots of sauces, dips and condiments go with each dish.

We had plenty to choose from anyway: coconut chutney, tomato chutney, a chilli sauce as well as three big pots of sambar, a lightly spicy lentil and vegetable soup or stew.

Anyway, with no one to say we were wrong, we just did a bit of mixing and matching, dipping here and there to see what we liked with what.

COCONUT SAMBAL

One pot I could identify was our order of Coconut Sambal (£1.99).

One of the things I love about South Indian and, as it turns out, Sri Lankan food, is the wide use of coconut in savoury and sweet dishes. So, of course, I just had to include this traditional Sri Lankan condiment.

The sambal seemed to consist mainly of coconut and chilies. But it had a pleasant sharp and salty edge too and went well with the other dishes.

I thought it perhaps contained something like shrimp paste or Thai fish sauce. But I’ve since learned that it was more likely an ingredient called Maldive fish. This is a dried product made from tuna and is used to thicken and flavour dishes.

VEECHU ROTTI & METHU VADA

The folded flatbread in the bowl below is Veechu Rotti (99p) and the doughnut shaped rings are Methu Vada (£1.50). The orange-crumbed cylinders I’ll talk about later.

Familiar from Indian cuisine, I knew that a rotti or roti was a flatbread, but what was a veechu roti?

I learned that veechu means ‘thrown’ in Tamil, one of Sri Lanka’s official languages. In this case it refers to the way the dough is folded to make little pockets of air. The result was a wonderfully light flatbread with a surprisingly rich flavour for something presumably quite simple.

The Methu Vada (sometimes called medu or medhu vada) I’ve almost always ordered when I’ve seen them on a menu.

Made from ground lentils and things like ginger, garlic and curry leaves, the fritters are crispy on the outside, soft in the middle. They’re also surprisingly tasty.

THAYIR VADA

Those lentil doughnuts were even better in our dish of Thayir Vada (£3.99).

Here they sat in a tangy but creamy curd (thayir is Tamil for curd). On top were onions, spices and a scattering of fresh herbs.

The contrast between the fried, substantial lentil doughnuts with the light, fresh and cool curd was very good.

I can’t remember eating anything quite like this before, but I’ll certainly seek it out again.

EGG & FISH ROLLS / MUTTON ROLLS

When I saw on Spicy Lanka’s menu Chicken Roll, Egg & Fish Roll, and Mutton Roll (all at £1.95 for 2 rolls) I had no idea what they were. With such generic-sounding names I held little hope of an online search making me any the wiser.

But I was wrong. Because it turns out that these pancakes, stuffed and fried, are a staple of Sri Lankan cooking.

The crunchy Mutton Rolls were full of soft, lightly spicy but well flavoured meat and were incredibly good.

I really couldn’t imagine what the Egg & Fish Rolls would be like, but curiosity got the better of us and we ordered them anyway. We were rewarded by hard-boiled egg and bold, salty fish that reminded me of anchovy. We both enjoyed it, but if strong flavour like that isn’t your thing, then stick to the mutton version or maybe try the chicken rolls.

The bright orange crumb coating might remind readers my age of those frozen stuffed pancakes of the seventies and eighties. But trust me. Findus Crispy Pancakes never tasted this good!

MASALA DOSA

One thing we both knew we wanted was Masala Dosa (£4.95). Actually, not wanting to share, we ordered two!

Back in Leicester’s South Indian restaurants, we loved to eat these huge but delicately thin pancakes made with a fermented batter of rice and lentils.

They can come stuffed with all sorts of things like cheese, lamb, egg or chicken, but we went for the classic masala dosa with its spicy potato filling.

Having travelled the nine or ten miles from Stoke in a takeaway bag, our dosas were a little crumpled. However, I’m sure that if we were eating in the restaurant, Spicy Lanka would serve up nicely cylindrical ones.

Not that it mattered as we still enjoyed the spiced soft potato in its crispy, flaky package, dipped into various chutneys.

IDLI

Our next dish I’d heard of but never actually eaten before.

Idli (£4.45) are soft and fluffy cakes usually eaten for breakfast. Like the dosas, they’re made with a fermented batter of rice and lentils.

As you might expect from the ingredients, while a pleasant texture and useful carb, the idli themselves are relatively bland.

However, they’re usually served with condiments and at Spicy Lanka it’s with lightly spicy vegetable and lentil sambar plus some of those chutneys.

KING FISH CURRY

Alongside all the stuffed pancakes, rolls and crisply fried goodies, of course we had to try a couple of curries.

When I think of non-vegetarian curries from this part of the world, I always think of seafood rather than meat ones. At Spicy Lanka you can have prawn, squid, crab or king fish in your seafood curry. We went for King Fish Curry (£5.95).

Neither of us had any idea what king fish was, but this was all about trying new things.

I thought the two generous slices were rather like swordfish. Definitely an oily fish anyway, and quite meaty. I’ve since learned that, sometimes called sinhala or seer fish, king fish seems to be related to mackerel. We enjoyed it anyway. Just watch out for any small bones.

The tomato and vegetable sauce I would call medium spiced with only a little delicate heat.

AUBERGINE CURRY

One thing you couldn’t say about the Aubergine Curry (£3.99) was that its heat was delicate.

Of all the dishes we ate, this was the one that left the lips pleasantly tingling.

I’m always a little wary about ordering aubergine as, undercooked, I really don’t like its spongy texture.

But there were no worries here. If anything, the aubergine was perhaps a little overdone with most of it having dissolved into the sauce, leaving the shiny black skin behind.

That didn’t particularly bother me though as I loved the deeply rich sauce. As well as the bold level of spicing, it tasted like there was a good amount of onion in there which had been thoroughly cooked to bring out a charred sweetness.

SRI LANKA SPECIAL PITTU KOTHU

Spicy Lanka has a whole section of the menu called Kothu Dishes. Like I was, I assume you’re absolutely clueless as to what those might be?

Well, let me share my new enlightenment (hopefully I’ve got this right).

Kothu (sometimes spelt kottu) means ‘to chop’ in Tamil and the basis of kothu dishes is chopped roti or flatbread. A popular street food, the bread is shredded and mixed on a hot griddle with things like egg, vegetables, meat, fish and spices.

Sounds simple enough? Sort of. Because not all kothu dishes include roti.

Instead, you could have idiyappam (rice noodles, sometimes called string hopper) or pittu (steamed rice flour and coconut, sometimes spelled puttu). Got that?

In reality though, as you might expect from what’s basically fast food, kothu isn’t complicated at all.

At Spicy Lanka there’s a choice of eight kothu dishes and we went for Sri Lanka Special Pittu Kothu (£7.95). This gets you, among those coconutty little chopped morsels, bits of all the other kothu dishes: vegetables, egg, chicken, tiny shrimp, mutton, squid and probably lots more I haven’t identified.

You’re not going to get this dish anywhere else, so do order some to eat with your curries rather than boring old rice.

DESSERTS

If you fancy a sweet finish to your meal, Spicy Lanka offers the traditional ice cream of the region, kulfi, in various guises. But with a twenty-five-minute journey home, that was obviously out of the question this time.

We didn’t want any of the Western desserts like cheesecake either, so went for Kasari (£2.49).

Often spelled kesari (kesar means saffron), this is a semolina-based dessert so I know won’t be for everyone. But I enjoyed its sweet graininess.

There was a good hit of cardamom flavour, a few of the seeds studded through the pudding along with cashew nuts.

LION STOUT

Currently, if you spend over £30 at Spicy Lanka you can get a free bottle of wine or large bottle of soft drink.

But, when ID went to collect our takeaway, he spotted that they sell Sri Lankan Lion Stout so took a chance and asked if we could have a bottle of that instead. They kindly agreed.

This dark, strong (8.8% ABV) beer has definite chocolate and coffee notes and, while it won’t take the place of our great local beers, we liked it.