Sri Lankan Food and Temple Tour 🇱🇰

An afternoon on his own in Kandy that is really one long lunch and two near misses. He eats a jackfruit pizza at a small vegetarian place, sets off for the Temple of the Sacred Tooth, doesn’t go in, walks to a Buddha statue instead, and arrives at the wrong one.

Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles. The restaurant’s phone number and map link are published in the video description, so under the bundle’s rule on advertising it is described here but not named.

Jackfruit as meat

The useful part of the video, and he films the whole thing being made.

• Baby jackfruit is used where chicken would be, and is what goes on the pizza. Larger jackfruit is cooked as a sambal or handled like potato; the largest is eaten as fruit.
• It tastes of very little on its own, which is the point — Harry’s verdict is that with a strong barbecue base he could not tell it from a meat pizza.
• The pizza: barbecue base rather than tomato, jackfruit, pineapple, bell pepper, onion, cheese, thin crust, in a wood-fired oven at around 300°C for seven to ten minutes.
• About $8, which he flags as expensive by Sri Lankan standards and then explains: it is Western food made from local ingredients, and he had been eating Sri Lankan food all week anyway.

The owner has been vegetarian three years and would go vegan but says it is hard and expensive in Sri Lanka — almond cheese and cashew milk are the problem. The shop does five to fifteen pizzas a day and delivers through the local ride-hailing apps.

Upstairs is a room with guitars, books in several languages and paintings, which Harry likes more than the food.

The two temples he doesn’t get into

The Temple of the Sacred Tooth. A man in the street tells him the times — a ceremony at 6:30, others at 5am and 9:30 — and gives him the entry price. According to the video description, locals go free and foreigners pay 2,000 rupees, and Harry misunderstands what he is told, comes away thinking it is very expensive, and doesn’t go. He says on camera he will come back.

A Buddha statue, walked to through a very local district with no tourists in it. He types buddha statue into the map, takes the first result, and finds a colourful seated Buddha on a road junction — impressive, not the one he meant, and with no obvious way in. See search for the best, not the nearest.

On Kandy itself

He has now been here nearly a week, against the one or two days he says most people give it, and calls it better than he expected — with the honest caveat that it is the only Sri Lankan city he has stayed in so far. He also notes there are fewer tourists here than he anticipated, and expects that to change going south.

Key moments

• [01:05] The wood-fired oven, and the owner turning out to be someone he met earlier in the week.
• [04:40] The three sizes of jackfruit and what each is used for.
• [06:12] Barbecue base instead of tomato.
• [07:15] Three years vegetarian, and why vegan is hard here.
• [08:19] 300°C, seven minutes.
• [10:57] The verdict: indistinguishable from a meat pizza.
• [13:05] About $8, and why that is more than a local meal.
• [14:05] The Temple of the Tooth times and price, misheard.
• [15:38] Searching for a Buddha statue and getting the wrong one.
• [16:40] Nearly a week in Kandy.

Extracted pages

• Sri Lanka
• Kandy
• Search for the best, not the nearest