Close your eyes and you’ll hear Sri Lanka’s anthem: the rapid, rhythmic clacking of kottu roti cleavers on a griddle. Open your eyes and find a slightly outdated dining room full of vintage-style posters and cricket memorabilia. Lion Lager from the motherland is a better bet than cocktails, a faultless match with fat, deep-fried whitebait and a seat in the timber-decked beer garden.

Spicy Wicket (formerly Upali’s) is known for its $16 lunch sets, which come with rice, three vegetable dishes, pappadums and coconut sambol, but regional dishes – such as aromatic dry black pork curry from the north – land on tables in the evening.

Lamprais, a Dutch Burgher specialty, is worth ordering despite the forewarned wait. Open the hefty, foil-wrapped package to reveal banana leaf-wrapped rice, chilli paste, eggplant pickle, fish, plantain, beef curry and egg.