$200 Fine Dining in Colombo, Sri Lanka🇱🇰

A five-course seafood dinner in Colombo with Ali, at a restaurant the comments had been telling Harry to go to for weeks — by the description’s account, number 29 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants for 2021, and owned by two well-known cricketers.

Most of the video is in the kitchen, which is where the useful material is.

Obs: Harry says on camera that he will put the restaurant’s website and social media in the description, and does, so under the bundle’s rule on advertising it is described here but not named. He does not say whether the meal was paid for or hosted, and no bill appears; the $200 is the video title’s figure. Temperature check and hand sanitiser at the door — March 2022.

How the crab is sold

The system is the most interesting thing in the room and is worth knowing before you order.

• Crabs are sold by size, each size named, with a lit display board.
• When a size sells out, the kitchen rings a bell and switches that light off, so the room can see what is still available.
• They run to about 2 kg routinely, occasionally 2.5 to 3 kg. The biggest grade is the one Harry ends up with, the small ones having gone.
• Live crabs are on display at the front.

The five courses

Oysters, taken as shots. Served in shot glasses with soy sauce, a house hot sauce, and lime in a small net that keeps the pips out. His verdict: much less fishy than oysters he’s had before, and the lime is what makes it.

Crab liver pâté, with crackers and kithul palm syrup — sweet against savoury, which he says is his favourite combination. He is told this is the only place making it this way.

Garlic chilli prawn. Deep-fried first, then simmered about 15 minutes in garlic, chilli and a great deal of oil, reducing as it goes. Harry is allowed to baste it himself. Served with thick fried garlic bread — and the part he reacts to hardest is the head butter: the natural fat from the prawn’s head, which you work out and eat with the bread. He calls it the best seafood he has ever eaten.

Black pepper crab. There is a choice of black pepper or garlic; they take the pepper. It is boiled in a pepper stock for 12 to 30 minutes depending on size, and arrives pre-cut but not extracted. The heat is different from chilli heat — pepper heat, which he can place immediately.

Coconut crème brûlée, made with coconut milk and flamed at the table. Cold inside, hot on top, and the one dish he gives ten out of ten.

Eating a crab, having never done it

Neither of them knows how, no instructions are given, and the tools are simply put down: crackers, a hook, and a fine pincer.

What they work out:

• The claws first, cracked and then pulled apart.
• The legs need loosening in the socket first, then pull — and the meat comes out whole.
• The legs taste noticeably different from the body, which surprises him more than anything else on the plate.
• The pincer is for the last of it, which Ali finds and Harry doesn’t.
• A big crab yields less meat than it looks like it should, which he says twice, about the prawn as well.

The kitchen

• Brutally hot, and he says so repeatedly — the staff are in it for hours.
• Ten or more dishes running at once, with a board tracking which table each belongs to.
• He cooks a prawn, badly, and asks for a job.

Obs: Harry repeats a claim that crabs feel emotions or fall in love, and immediately says on camera that he expects the comments to fact-check him. It is recorded here as him saying it (from video – unverified).

Key moments

• [01:31] The lit board, and the live crabs.
• [03:16] The bell system explained.
• [04:19] Holding the biggest crab in the tank.
• [05:20] Oysters as shots.
• [07:25] Crab liver pâté with palm syrup.
• [09:29] The prawns going into the oil.
• [10:59] Basting one himself.
• [15:37] Head butter.
• [16:40] The crab in its pepper stock.
• [18:42] No instructions, two men and a set of tools.
• [23:14] Why the legs taste different.
• [25:46] Coconut crème brûlée, flamed at the table.

Extracted pages

• Sri Lanka
• Colombo
• Ali