A new Putney restaurant offering Sri Lankan food is coming to Upper Richmond Road.
Colombo Kitchen is due to open in May and will be the second restaurant from chef Sylvia Perera following her first in Worcester Park. She will take over the Holy Cow restaurant, next to Glug wine bar and opposite Artisan coffee.
For those not familiar with Sri Lankan food, it is similar to Indian food in that it is spicy and uses a blend of chilli, coriander, cumin and tumeric in most dishes. But it also incorporates cinnamon, lemongrass and pandan leaves to give it a unique, delicious taste – and smell.
Sri Lankan food also uses much more seafood, given its island status, including fish, shrimp and crab. This is reflected in the menu for the current Colombo Kitchen which features Hot Butter Prawn, Negombo King Prawn Curry, King Crab Curry and Fried King Fish, among others. The menu also features a range of vegetable dishes (Cashew Curry, Chilli Paneer) and pork-based curries and stir-frys.
However, the Sri Lankan specialities which will be most worth trying are “hoppers” – which are bowl-shaped crêpes made from rice and coconut milk that you add small amounts of food to before rolling them up and eating them with your hands – and “lamprais” that comprise several different flavours of curry wrapped together with rice and baked in banana leaves. Both are delicious.
The hoppers are what chef Sylvia is known for and she is often seen cooking them in an open kitchen in front of customers – something that we will hopefully also see in the new Putney restaurant.
The arrival of a new restaurant is also good news for this part of Upper Richmond Road which, despite the recent announcement that Papa John’s pizza shop is closing, now has a wide range of excellent food and drink available with a short walk, including Baseface Pizza, whose owner we recently interviewed.
