The dish that changed everything for Sri Lankan Australian chef Peter Kuruvita was a snapper curry.
Back in the early 2000s, while running celebrated Sydney restaurant Flying Fish, he wanted to translate the flavours he grew up with in Colombo for an Australian audience.
The result was a dish that would go on to dominate the menu for two decades: a perfectly seared fillet of Australian snapper crowned with a zesty coconut sambol, served with a deeply aromatic, creamy coconut curry sauce; a miniature sweet-potato-and-prawn pan roll by its side; the quintessential serving of rice; a thick sweet and sour swipe of tamarind chutney; and a cooling raita.
“If you put everything together in one bite, it takes you straight back to my grandmother’s kitchen,” Kuruvita says. “For 20 years, that dish would take up half of the orders of main courses in the restaurant.”
Decades and multiple other restaurants later (including Flying Fish in Fiji, Noosa Beach House and Alba in Noosa, now all closed), the dish remains one of his signatures and reflects his contemporary approach to Sri Lankan cooking.
That philosophy – and this dish – now arrive in Melbourne through Serendip at Evergreen, a limited-time residency at Crown Melbourne from March 19 to April 26. Kuruvita is presenting a seven-course menu inspired by Sri Lanka’s culinary landscape.
His goal is not just to introduce diners to the cuisine – he wants to compel them to discover the country behind it. “Everyone thought Sri Lankan food was a bit like Indian food,” he says. “Then they taste it and go, ‘Holy hell, this is completely different’.”
Sri Lankan cooking itself is shaped by centuries of colonisation and cultural exchange. Portuguese, Dutch and Malay influences sit alongside South Indian techniques and regional traditions across the island. The country is home to communities of Vedda (the Indigenous people of the island), Sinhalese, Tamil, Arabic, Malay and Burgher people, with different languages and traditions. It’s also a country that has weathered political turmoil while its people remain deeply resilient.
Authenticity, Kuruvita says, is not found in national labels but in individual kitchens. “Your pol [coconut] sambol will be different to mine,” he says. “Your neighbour’s will be different again. We use the same ingredients, but every household has its own technique.”
That sense of personal history guides his cooking. “My grandmother sits on my shoulder with a wooden spoon,” he says with a laugh. “You can modernise a dish however you like, but if you change the flavour, Sri Lankans will walk away.”
But Kuruvita doesn’t think Melburnians will want to walk away from this menu. “Melbourne diners are curious,” he says. “It’s one of the best food cities in the world.” Curiosity, he believes, often leads somewhere unexpected.
Sri Lanka itself has long been a travellers’ secret. Surf breaks line the south and east coasts, misty tea plantations crown its lush central highlands, and fertile farmland and ancient cities sit within a few hours of each other. The lesser-visited north, meanwhile, offers rich Tamil culture and a food tradition as awe-inspiring as the landscapes themselves.
Increasingly, Kuruvita has turned his attention to promoting Sri Lanka through culinary tours and his work filming Masterchef Sri Lanka. His hope is that discovering the cuisine at Serendip might inspire Australians to experience it at the source.
“Many Australians go to Bali for a vacation,” he says. “Sri Lanka is a very different country, but it’s another beautiful island only nine hours away.”
From coastal seafood curries and coconut sambols to hill-country vegetables and spice gardens, he argues the island offers one of the most diverse food cultures in the region. “Once people taste it, they start asking where it comes from.”
For Melbourne diners, Serendip at Evergreen offers a glimpse of that landscape, one that might spark a bigger journey. “Come through this menu and you’ll see what modern Sri Lankan food can be,” Kuruvita says. “Then, hopefully, you’ll want to see the country for yourself.”
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Crown. To experience Serendip at Evergreen, reservations can be made via Crown’s website.