The Jaffna Food Festival 2024 was inaugurated for the second consecutive year by MaRadha Colombo on Thursday. The hotel will serve authentic Jaffna food from May 9 to 14 from 7 pm bringing the country’s Northern culinary traditions to the fore.
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The opening of the festival took place with the participation of many guests including the Ambassador of Nepal to Sri Lanka, Bashu Dev Mishra.
MaRadha Chairman Saagie Navarathnam said that the festival will be a vibrant celebration of culture, unity, and gastronomy.
The diverse culinary traditions and the power of food has the capacity to bring people together, he told the festival’s opening.
Traditional Jaffna food on display
“We invite food lovers and adventurers to experience the unique charm of Jaffna cuisine, where coconut takes centre stage, infusing dishes with its rich and creamy goodness, and other delectable dishes such as crab curry, spicy lagoon fish, Jaffna squid or cuttlefish curry among the other home-made flavours,” said MaRadha Colombo General Manager Thyaga Perera.
The hotel has dedicated three of its floors to serve Jaffna food buffet, in the Royal Code Restaurant, The Banquet, and the Healing Cafe.
The buffet offers a full array of Jaffna food, said MaRadha Colombo Operations Manager Shanika Wickramarathne. “You will be treated to three of the authentic Jaffna soup varieties as starters, Thereafter you will be served 28 items that comes in the main course and 30 varieties of condiments and indigenous Jaffna desserts.”
Some 95 percent of the items or ingredients which are used in the productions are brought all the way from Jaffna . Especially the sea food is brought from Jaffna, because the fish found in the seas of Jaffna and the lagoons there are endemic to those areas, said Wickramarathne.
Ma Radha has organised the Jaffna Food Festival in collaboration with My Sister’s Kitchen as in 2023. Thush, Danu’s sister, is the My Sister’s Kitchen’s Chef. Her cooking is inspired by the traditional cooking heritage of Jaffna that has been passed on through generations.
For the past two weeks the hotel has been selling palmyrah at its entrance. We brought them from Jaffna every two days, which was the initial stage of the ongoing festival.
There are countless exclusive curries to set your tastebuds on fire with, such as Jaffna mutton curry, which is tender mutton cooked with a blend of local spices, Chicken Jaffna Poriyal, a dish that highlights the use of traditional Jaffna spices, Jaffna Cuttlefish Curry, and Jaffna Seafood Kool, a traditional spicy seafood soup from Jaffna mad with a mix of crab, shrimp, cuttlefish, and fish in a thick, tangy broth flavoured with tamarind and Jaffna curry powder.
Unlike South Indian cooking or Sri Lankan counterparts, Jaffna cuisine has curries with a thinner consistency yet packs a punch with its intense spices.
