Sri Lankan brunch

I came back from an early morning walk around the bay, swam in the clear blue sea amidst the regular breaking waves, then had a shower back at my guest house.

Fifty yards from the guest house and by the beach is this wonderful food stall beside the main road. I discovered it on my first day in Mirissa and ate there every day thereafter. Tourists do sometimes eat there but their main business was providing for local passing trade and take-away rotis, their speciality. 

This meal was their basic vegetable curry with boiled rice with my regular drink of coconut juice they call a 'king coconut'. The curry cost the equivalent of about £1.25 and the coconut was £0.25. Every day the individual dishes would be made of different fresh ingredients. I'd sometimes have the fish curry instead, which still came with dall and separate vegetables. 

One evening I ordered a fish noodle dish to ring the changes but found the fish was rather tough, so left it on the side of the plate and just enjoyed all the vegetables. The man serving the food leaned over me and asked what was wrong. I assured him that it was fine, and tried to indicate that I just didn't like the chewy texture. He said it is dried fish  and that explained the texture. The owner of the stall appeared a minute later and was also concerned.'It is dried fish' he said again reassuringly. I smiled and indicated I wasn't worried. Two minutes later a new bowl of fresh fish curry arrived with a smile. They just didn't want me to be disappointed.

On the evening before I left I went to the counter to pay my small bill and gestured that I was leaving 'tomorrow go Colombo'. The waiter's face went slightly long and he went into the sweets cabinet and got out a packet of chocolate covered peanuts (which he knew I liked) and slapped them in my hand as a present and walked away to carry on waiting. I was extremely touched. I just want to record my thanks to him and them again here, for the record. They are lovely kind people.