A couple of weeks ago I was invited back to The Coconut Tree Reading to enjoy more of their delicious Sri Lankan street food to celebrate the restaurant’s founders, Shamil and Rodrigo, winning Come Dine With Me: The Professionals*.
“The Coconut Tree is an authentic family and friends-run Sri Lankan restaurant group, passionate about sharing uniquely Sri Lankan flavours with the world.”
During October and November, the chef’s took their winning menu on tour around the United Kingdom to eight of their restaurant sites (locations here), which included bringing along their Hopper Station for guests to try their hand at making their own bowl-shaped coconut milk pancakes.
Unlike at my last visit to The Coconut Tree over a year ago, the food and drink was all planned out for the evening and my friend and I were excited to get stuck in. We were quickly given cocktails to enjoy and our servers were extremely friendly, very knowledgeable about their offering and were able to tailor our drink choices based on things we said we liked (and also I was driving so that needed to be considered).
The Hopper Station
The Hopper station was a lot of fun and enabled me to gain a better appreciation of the Sri Lankan Hopper, how it is made and how best to enjoy it.
Using a hot wok and a ladle full of a coconut milk batter, you carefully coat the wok with a layer of the batter, break an egg into the middle, add seasoning, then put the lid onto the wok and allow the pancake to cook for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, we were talked through some of the fillings that we were going to add to the pancake afterwards, and how to fold it ready for eating.
Mains
One of the key things I love about the food offering at The Coconut Tree, is the variety and that because it’s all small plates, you get to try a bit of everything.
For the main courses, our table were delivered of seven small plates which were a mixture of meat and vegetable based dishes. Black pork, cashew nuts, kotthu (luxury Sri Lankan street food), dahl, maluwa (mango in a coconut sauce), and two curries.
Everything was perfection and really championed the fresh ingredients. I love spice when it is used for flavour, not for burn-your-mouth-off heat, and this is why I have so enjoyed discovering the food from Sri Lanka.
As a country, Sri Lanka has been on my wish list of destinations for a very long time, and when I thought we were going to be able to plan a trip in 2018, we got called to a family wedding in Mexico instead. And now we have a young family so holidays like that are off the table for another while yet.
I thought our dinner would take an hour or so, but my friend and I didn’t leave our table for two, almost three hours I think, but we had a wonderful evening.
The Come Dine with Me winning menu tour has come to an end now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find an excuse to visit one of the eight Coconut Tree restaurants. At the time of writing, The Coconut Tree has just launched their Christmas menu and it looks DELICIOUS!
Until next time x
*Press opportunity. All opinions are honest and my own.
**A special thank you to my friend Gemma for being my unofficial official photographer for the evening and for allowing me use of her photos.
