Colombo Evening Street Food Tour with Tastings Included

Colombo eats late. The office crowd clears out, the heat drops, and the carts and hole-in-the-wall kitchens that were half-shuttered at four in the afternoon start doing their real trade. This tour is built around that shift, starting in the evening and running about three hours with all the food included.

The island's food is the product of everyone who has passed through it. Sinhalese rice and curry sits alongside Tamil dosai and vadai, Muslim short eats and biryani, Malay pickles and Dutch-descended lamprais, and Colombo is where all of it is available within a few streets. Your guide orders in Sinhala and Tamil as the stall requires, and explains what is in front of you rather than leaving you to guess.

Expect kottu roti made on a hot plate with two blades, which you hear before you see it; hoppers, the bowl-shaped rice-flour pancakes that come plain or with an egg broken into the middle; isso wade, the prawn fritters sold from carts along Galle Face Green at dusk; and a run of short eats, the deep-fried rolls, cutlets and patties that fill every glass case in the city. Sweet things and a drink close the evening.

Sri Lankan chilli is not decorative. Most of what you will be handed is properly hot, though the guide can steer you to milder versions and every stall has something that will not burn. Say something early rather than suffering politely.

The route is walked in short hops with transport between clusters, and it doubles as a night tour of the city: Pettah's arcades after the shutters come down, the sea wall at Galle Face, and the ordinary residential streets where the best kottu usually is.