Spice Up Your Taste Buds, Boost Your Immune System

EATERY:

Sigiri Sri Lanka Restaurant

LOCATION:

91 1st Ave, New York, NY 10003

REVIEWS:

Chilli is one of the most important cash crops grown in Sri Lanka, it contributes an average of Rs.750 millions to GDP and creates employment of 14 million work days annually. No wonder their cuisine is known to be the hottest in the world. So with our greatest expectations I and Young march into Sigiri in East Village, attempt to sweat out our toxins and boost our immune system. Compared to the kaleidoscopic almost psychedelic chillies lights and disco festive neighbors Panna and Milon next door, Sigiri is like a poet sitting quietly waiting for your next sophisticated discussion and your BYO Boost. Without much knowledge of Sri Lankan food I order the chef specialties Chicken Lamprais ($13.50). It is a Dutch influenced "special occasion" dish wrapped in a banana leaf and baked in a low temperature oven. One can really taste the harmony of fragrant basmati rice, peppercorns, cinnamon bark, cloves, cayenne, cardamom, chicken, fish cutlet, ash plantains and egg. The banana leaf releases its flavor to the rice during the baking that complement the unique taste. This dish is not that spicy hot and Mucho Excellente! Young orders the Sri Lankan Crab Curry ($16.50). The curry sauce is quite dilute compared to lets say curry from Northern India or Pakistan. But don’t let the thin watery curry fools you, the curry sauce contains such a complex flavor of freshly grinded coconut, shallots, chiles, garlic, ginger, turmeric, fenugreek, chile powder, paprika powder, cinnamon stick, curry leaves, coriander leaves and coconut milk. We specifically order this dish spicy and we end up sweating like crazy, so be careful if you can’t take the heat. Feeling like sampling more dishes we ask the very nice waitress and she suggests the Kotthu Roti ($11.50). It is traditionally a Sri Lankan street food- shredded roti stir fried with vegetables, onions, egg and beef with beef curry sauce on the side. The dish is quite good but what impressed us the most is the dark color curry sauce. It is a traditional Sri Lankan "black curries" which they roast the curry mixture before cooking, resulting in a more subtle unique taste. I will definitely come back just to try their curry.

RANTS & RAVES:

This place is BYOB. We went down to the grocery stores downstairs and got some Sri Lankan Lion Beers ($2.75 each). The beer are stong (Larger 8.8% and Stout 8% alchol/vol), perfect to wash down their liberal use of spices. We didn’t try their Aapa (Hoppers), are they good? Anybody try them? Their site: http://www.sigirinyc.com/

TAGS:

New York East Village Sri Lankan BYOB