One of my favorite things about living in Silicon Valley is the availability of food from the Indian subcontinent, the southern portion in particular. Saravana Bhavan is my favorite restaurant. I jump at the opportunity to try something new in this vein, e.g., the short-lived Charulata (Bengali), the excellent Green Lettuce (Indian-style Chinese in Vancouver, BC — the local Passage to India has a Desi Chinese menu), and perhaps the best restaurant meal of my life at the departed Surat Sweets (Gujarati, also in Vancouver, BC).

Recently I saw Curry Leaf advertised as the only Sri Lankan restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area and tried it out this afternoon. I vaguely expected something like South Indian cuisine plus fish. I was wrong. Sri Lankan cuisine heavily uses spices associated with India but is otherwise distinct. I don’t have vocabulary to describe it well, so see A Taste of Serendib. I had vegetarian Kottu Roti, with Jackfruit chunks standing in as meat. Pleasantly spicy. I recommend the place. It is of course in a low rent strip mall.