Sri Lanka’s Spiciest Kottu! 🇱🇰

Back in Kandy with Luke and Ali for the dish everyone has been telling him to eat. He has never had kottu, orders it spicy because the others tell him to, and spends the back half of the video dealing with the consequences.

Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles.

What kottu is, and how it is made

Ali gives the description and the kitchen gives the demonstration, which Harry gets permission to film.

• Flatbread, chopped. A cooked roti-style bread is worked on the hot plate with a pair of blunt blades until it is in small pieces.
• Into it go onion, vegetables, spices and a choice of chicken, cheese or other toppings — Harry has chicken.
• The chilli flakes are what make it hot, added openly on the plate.
• You are asked spicy or not spicy when you order.

His comparison is that it looks like a Sri Lankan version of chicken fried rice, with bread where the rice would be.

The spice

He is honest that his tolerance is low — he can eat spice, he just doesn’t often — and the result is the most useful thing in the video for anyone in the same position.

• It is not a slow burn. He was braced for a build and describes it as instant.
• It buries everything else. He can’t taste the chicken or the vegetables, only chilli; the bread is the one thing that comes through.
• It arrives late anyway. His account is that three bites are fine and the fourth is a punch in the face.
• A side sauce he is nervous of turns out not to be spicy at all, and is the relief.

He comes back to the same thought he had at breakfast on his first day: people eat this every day, including at breakfast, and their tolerance must simply be built. His own plan is to keep ordering spicy until his catches up.

What it cost

• 400 rupees for his kottu — about $2, for a plate he doesn’t finish and calls two meals’ worth.
• 700 rupees for the table, and he hands over 1,000.
• He had expected four or five dollars, and says so.

He also mentions the practical annoyance of the trip: he is changing countries often enough that he converts everything into pounds first and then into dollars for the audience.

Around the meal

• Monks in the street, and his summary of why they look as they do: shaved heads and identical robes because hair and clothes are distractions from a simple life.
• Birds at dusk loud enough that he stops to point out that you cannot hear the traffic over them.
• A sweet shop: a hard sugar-glazed pastry at 80 rupees for 100 g — about 40 cents — alongside ribbon cake, fruit cake and fudge.
• A British-style postbox, which prompts a passer-by to explain that the country was British until 1948.

The rule he states out loud

Picking the restaurant, he says it as advice to the audience: choose the place the locals are eating in, because that is how you know the food is good. It is the second time in three days he has made the point — see eat at the local place.

Key moments

• [00:30] Monks, and what the robes and the shaved heads are for.
• [02:08] Ali explains what kottu is.
• [04:14] Filming the kitchen: the bread going under the blades.
• [05:16] Ordered spicy, on the boys’ advice.
• [06:50] The first mouthful, and the verdict that it’s the hottest thing he has eaten in the country.
• [09:52] Three bites fine, the fourth not.
• [11:24] 400 rupees, about $2.
• [11:56] Why he picks the place the locals are in.
• [14:56] 80 rupees per 100 g at the sweet shop.
• [15:27] The postbox, and 1948.

Extracted pages

• Sri Lanka
• Kandy
• Luke Damant
• Ali
• Eat at the local place