RESTAURANT REVIEW : Siri Lanka Curry House: Tasteful Touch, Rare Cuisine

About 10 years ago, there was a Sri Lankan restaurant in Encino, right across the street from a Burger King, and it was one spunky little place. Unknown as its cuisine was in Encino, it boldly answered the Home of the Whopper with a sign declaring itself to be the “Home of the Hopper.”

The problem was that not enough people knew that a hopper is a Sri Lankan delicacy, a delicate crepe made from coconut and rice meal. Encinans didn’t get the joke, and they didn’t eat anywhere near enough hoppers. Pretty soon the Home of the Hopper disappeared.

It was a shame, because Sri Lankan food is very attractive, rather like Indian food, though not as similar as Sri Lanka’s location off the southern tip of India might lead you might expect. Often, with its coconut sauces and non-chutney side dishes, it seems a first cousin to Indonesian food.

It’s also a rare cuisine; there are only three Sri Lankan restaurants in the entire country, according to the owners of one in Hollywood that is buried in a corner of a mini-mall and insists on making it hard for people to get its number from Information by spelling “Sri” as two syllables (“Siri”).

Don’t let that stop you. This is a very interesting restaurant indeed, starting with the papadums. As at many an Indian restaurant, they bring out these paper-thin chickpea nachos before you order, accompanied by a hot and a sweet chile sauce, and also an unusual apple chutney. It’s chunks of stewed apple mixed with what tastes remarkably like American barbecue sauce. The restaurant even sells the sauce by the pint for barbecue purposes.

These sauces, chutneys or whatever you wish to call them, are also handy if you order any of the knickknacks (Sri Lankans do not actually eat an appetizer course, but the restaurant offers some Sri Lankan snacks, under not particularly helpful names; e.g., “patties” are samosas ). I’m thinking of the vades , “vegeburgers” made from yellow lentils, green chiles and onions; by themselves they’re a little dry, served with nothing but a condiment of fried coconut.

The main part of the menu is a list of nine curries, including squid curry and even chicken giblet curry. They’re all prepared differently. The crab curry, for instance, is in a tart coconut sauce said to have some ground rice in it--it’s a great sauce, and makes up for the fact that there’s not much to the crab that’s served in it.

Four of the curries go into a Sri Lankan specialty called lampries . This word, pronounced “lump rice,” has nothing to do with the eel-like fish called lamprey , excessive eating of which is said to have killed Henry I of England. Like the Indonesian rijsttafel , it’s a Dutch word ( lomprijst ) and in a way it’s the equivalent of that Indonesian feast.

But whereas rijsttafel is rice plus a lot of side dishes, lampries consists of rice, lamb, chicken, beef and pork curries, and several other things mixed together and steamed in a banana leaf. Eating lampries is not the best way to learn the difference between the different curries, of course, but you can distinguish the lamb (tamarind flavor, gamy lamb aroma), the beef (coconut and garlic) and the pork (ginger, tomato) from the chicken (just sort of curried).

Mixed in with the curries are likely to be a sweet eggplant condiment (I could make a meal of it alone), a similar condiment called seenisambola made from onions fried dark brown and cooked with tamarind and sugar, and a couple of other things like toasted shredded coconut and cashews. Lampries needs to be advance-ordered, with about an hour’s notice.

There are a dozen other entrees ranging from a curious dish called “roasted curried chicken” to a fish marinated in lemon and saffron and served in a surprisingly spicy sauce with a generous chicken pilaf on the side. The chicken has the waxy texture of duck and is not particularly spicy, but it comes with a coconut sauce, a vegetable pilaf and the usual accompaniments of sweet eggplant and cucumber and onion in yogurt.

Apart from the curry list there are several vegetable dishes, a list of specialties including mallung (shredded vegetables fried with mustard, garlic and coconut; you sprinkle it on other dishes for a tart flavor) and of course hoppers, which you can get with any curry. Even better than plain hoppers (called appe on the menu) are the curiously named string hoppers, little patties of steamed vermicelli made from rice and coconut.

The desserts are a strange handful. Vatalappan is a Sri Lankan cousin of coconut flan, but with a rather flabby texture, and there are some very strange cakes: rich cake, which tastes like fruitcake, and love cake, which tastes like compacted coconut. The best dessert by far is ice cream with a generous sprinkling of “cashew nugget,” which turns out to be like the French almond candy praline, only made from cashews.

I know Siri Lanka Curry House hasn’t asked my advice, but I think they should have a sign reading: Home of the Lampries, the Cashew Nugget and the String Hopper.

Suggested dishes: vegetable patties, $1.60; string hoppers with meat curry, $5; lampries, $11; ice cream with cashew nugget, $1.50.

Siri Lanka Curry House, 1308 Fountain Ave., Los Angeles. (213) 466-8238. Open continuously for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. No alcoholic beverages. Parking lot. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $13 to $35.