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The family behind Dulwich Hill cafe The Fold have opened Kurumba, a celebration of Sri Lankan street food in a converted Surry Hills terrace house.

The 45-seat venue features an informal 15-seat hopper bar on the ground floor, where the fermented rice pancakes are pan-fried in front of customers and served with a selection of house made condiments like spicy onion jam and chilli lime sambal.

Upstairs, the restaurant (set to open mid-to-late-September) serves a tight menu of food inspired by executive chef Augustus De Hoedt’s childhood in Sri Lanka.

“We’re showing off a different side of Sri Lankan cuisine,” says co-owner and son Travin De Hoedt, who has come on board as the executive pastry chef.

De Hoedt points to the restaurant’s signature dish, lobster kottu. Kottu is typically a casual dish with roti, curried meat, egg and vegetables, cleaved into small pieces as they fry on a hot grill.

“It’s something you’d buy from a street vendor on the way home from a night out, or you’ll pull together for an easy breakfast,” he says.

“But we’ve elevated it with lobster from Western Australia, served in a lobster head curry. We use our own roasted curry powder and homemade roti.”

There are also seeni sambol puffs, with spicy onion jam and buffalo curds from Marrickville cheese maker Vanella; smoked brisket pain rolls with pineapple ketchup; and Lankan devilled fish.

The dishes are available a la carte or as part of an $85 tasting menu, and while the drinks list favours wine (developed in partnership with sommeliers from Franca and Armorica), there’ll also be a selection of Sri Lankan spirits and a signature treacle beer made as part of a collaboration with Newcastle brewers Bread and Brewery.

Interiors are lush and green, with furniture and paintings created by Sri Lankan artists and manufacturers.

De Hoedt explains his family has long dreamed of opening an upscale Sri Lankan restaurant in Sydney, but never expected they would have to sacrifice their now-closed Dulwich Hill cafe The Fold to make it work.

The Fold announced its closure via Instagram on July 10, almost two years since the family decided to pursue Kurumba.

“We wanted to keep The Fold as well but due to the staffing shortage, we couldn’t make it happen,” De Hoedt says.

“We would have had to split the family across the two venues, which would have compromised the quality of the restaurant.

“At the end of the day, people came to The Fold to try dad’s curry and we didn’t want to put someone else in charge of it.”

The restaurant will remain a family affair, with De Hoedt’s mother Dilkushie managing the restaurant and brother Jason working together with wife Saaya Takahashi De Hoedt as pastry chef and sous pastry chef respectively.

That means the celebratory cakes the De Hoedt family were well known for in Dulwich Hill can be pre-ordered at Kurumba, alongside desserts such as soft-serve faluda, their riff on a popular dessert made from vermicelli, jelly, rose syrup sabja seeds, milk and ice-cream).

The ground floor of Kurumba is offering the full menu until the upstairs dining room is complete.

Open lunch Fri-Sun; Tue-Sat dinner (kitchen closes at 9.30pm).

555 Crown Street, Surry Hills, 02 9331 5737, kurumbasyd.com.au