Eat at the local place

Given the choice between somewhere aimed at foreigners and somewhere aimed at nobody in particular, Harry takes the second, and he states it as a rule rather than a preference.

Two reasons, and he gives both. The first is price: the same meal is routinely a fraction of the cost a few doors away. The second is the one that actually decides it — a room full of local customers is a quality signal you cannot fake, and it is available in a language you don’t speak, in a town you know nothing about, at the moment you are standing in the street deciding.

A useful corollary he applies in Kandy: no English on the sign is a good sign, not a problem to solve.

How Harry applies it

On his first morning in Sri Lanka, he walks past a bakery that looks good, keeps going because he wants something more local, and ends up with beef pastries and a vegetable roti for about $1.50 in a room where he is asked where he is from ten times. He says afterwards that the Western place would have been more expensive and would have given him none of that.

Three days later, ordering kottu, he says it straight to camera as advice: he always tries to pick the restaurant the locals are eating in, because that is how you know the food is good. The plate costs 400 rupees — about $2 — for what he reckons is two meals, against the four or five dollars he had braced for.

The other half: ask, don’t only look

Choosing by looking at who is in the room works when you can see the room. On Colombo’s all-night food street he uses the version that works before that: ask a local where to eat. He says it as the opening move of the video and does it twice, and it produces both the string hoppers he has been chasing for three weeks and an invitation into a samosa kitchen.

The two are the same tactic at different ranges — let someone who lives there narrow it down, whether by their custom or by their answer.

The limit of it

He doesn’t pretend it’s a rule about virtue. On the drive to Sigiriya the group spots a Pizza Hut from the van and stops, and Harry’s own commentary is that this is not local food. The tip is about how to choose when you are choosing, not a vow.

Demonstrated in

• My First Impressions of SRI LANKA (Not what I expected)🇱🇰 — walks past the bakery, eats where the locals do, and explains the saving afterwards.
• Sri Lanka’s Spiciest Kottu! 🇱🇰 — states it as a tip to the audience while picking the place.
• Sri lankan Stranger Won’t Let Me Pay 🇱🇰 — asking rather than looking, on a food street he doesn’t know.