 do it i'm going for it oh yo that's like eating the entire clam chowder where is the country of Sri Lanka is it the teardrop of india what's it known for and why does the food especially koto looks so good we took a trek out to the borough of stan island to one of the only Sri Lankan neighborhoods in america to find out welcome everybody to a special Sri Lankan episode of fun grows food we have ventured all the way out to stan island and we are nearby little Sri Lanka maybe the only Sri Lankan enclave on the entire east coast and of course joining us today we've got Sri Lankan comedian friend shinook i'm Sri Lankan i am sinhalese and of course we got mr never eat anything v vake with us let's go v vake is here to just be the indian fact-checker pretty much okay all right really excited to do this video because we're going to be having authentic Sri Lankan food we're going to be going to some grocery stores we're going to be checking out the community and talking about how cool Sri Lanka is and how they're not indians shinook what's something that we can learn in Sri Lankan and like kick this journey off mamadeng maragini our first spot is lakrawana it is a Sri Lanka buffet let's go mamadeng maragini that means what i'm hungry i'm hungry i am hungry listen it took like 90 minutes to get to stan island all right shinook where are we at right now because it looks like we have taken a portal to Sri Lanka you are literally in Sri Lanka right now and your guys's goal is to sort of as some of the few Sri Lankans representing in america to provide like a very authentic like representation right because especially if my dad if you see the decor he spent more money on the decor than him earning it back he has so much love for his country and they've been here for 35 years and i think they never it feels like they never left home but even though they live in new york so as as much as this is a restaurant would you say it's also almost like a museum or like art exhibit you can say that we actually do have a museum down at the block it's actually mine so you guys are repping Sri Lanka like as hard as m i a shinook what are we looking at man i mean these are like traditional like you go to a party there's gonna be like a hundred of each of these just sitting around like you'll eat one and then 10 more will come out of nowhere like it's like just like a little piece of like dough wrapped and then breaded and then bread rolls all right i'm gonna i'm gonna get the sauce i like this little spoon here too what's up with the uh pull up in the tanka kala willy wanka how did that just came from Sri Lanka in best verse i felt you were like i'm that bad bitch from Sri Lanka i love you that is who i am it's like curry there's different types of things that you can see in there almost like a less processed sausage i'm gonna try the vegetable one we just had the rolls we're moving on to the Sri Lankan drinks what are we looking at mango juice mango lassi passion fruit our cheers guys cheers hold on shinook you said at the beginning of the video you guys are not indian but but you obviously there's a lot of shared culture right mango lassi it does a lot of culture copy right shinook you got to describe the chip on the shoulder of Sri Lanka right they're looking at you and they're expecting bollywood dances and you're like dude that's like five thousand miles away word and it's always like oh you're talking like oh what part of india is that yeah no no no it's its own country actually oh hey you know what hopefully after this video today let's do it people might have a better idea right if you were growing up in Sri Lanka consuming media is most of the media going to be bollywood stuff dubbed in like cinnally like my parents watch by the way films undub we just watch it straight and hindi and like with subtitles right no like not just no but then how do you guys even understand what's going on dude we wait for the music and the dancing right sure that's it that's fine all right next up we gotta go to maruti yeah all right man this looks super unique oh this looks like fresh roti right here too yeah i'll stretch you boom roti on the plate give me your plate you guys this is a bony fish i've been warned to not bite into this i might just go down maruti with king fish no i love that curry oh my goodness the fish is dense yo that was actually really good the roti here is so perfect it's really stretchy really thin this is super hot oh give that a five out of five bro rarely do i have fish curry and when i do i think there's a high niche rate in america you know what i mean like even when you people attempt to do it it doesn't turn out well that's really good i know this is like the most different thing that i've seen since coming right like you don't recognize this at all i have like no direct comparison yeah oh that's what i would say you know hoppers with lamb curry you know that rice flour it's really like kind of just disintegrates in your mouth it just breaks down it's really really soft really good and just a really experiential way to eat something i think yo the curry with the crack yolk news do it i'm going for it do it oh yo that's like eating the entire clam chowder bro like your bone are gone the egg in it makes it so you know this is a five out of five for me if you guys have had any exposure to Sri lankan food it's probably the kota roti right like this is like the like we said like the hamburger of hamburg germany is it weird to you as a desi person to see another desi country just eat pork for you yeah it is well beef would be even better but like pork is like not really a big thing in india at all kota roti i mean is uh i'll tell you this you'll live a lot longer if you don't drink smoke or even live in a western society too so that's fun wow that's on another level from the ones that i've had dude i've had some kota roti before i had like some street stalls and like small businesses but the street ones hit in their own way wow the street ones are so dope oh my god you wasn't playing around she was choking on the smoke like it was like it was some straight zaza double shrimp got a blow on it guys oh wow i know why they call the double shrimp but that was really really good i like the spice um here it wasn't too spicy but it's just enough to give you that kick and it was kind of sweet overall i wonder what do you think i don't know you have some of the peppers what what do you feel about the spice man the spice level is pretty good it's not as spicy as my mom makes it okay but that's still really good that is one of the hottest sizzling plates i personally have been around you guys gotta come here and try the double shrimp all right you guys wrapping up our savory dishes uh here at lakruana prior to dessert we got a lot of dishes and some of these look really familiar yeah man i mean this is lamb rice the banana leaf is like traditional Sri lankan food basically have a rice on the bottom of that with a curry and then all this is just the seasoning on top like that's really good wow all right honestly is this better than the one your mom with me this one's fire this is really good it's not that spicy of a dish now in Sri lankan would this dish make it be a little spicier it'd be fire okay five out of five here five out of five for the lamb rice you got the biryani okay which is actually honestly an Indian influence like it's very but it's got its own look to it this is a string that's the my fun coat yeah that's no it looks like noodles it looks like noodles but it's a string half a coat this is the hatamalu it's like a vegetarian curry with like all and a bunch of like veggies in it so you're eating this a lot nowadays oh big time whoa way more like pineapples and tropical sweet yeah this might be the original version of the Hong Kong cafe dish the Singaporean style stir-fried rice noodle it's super spicy actually it's really good of all the dishes we had and we still got more to go which one was your favorite i feel like for you you gotta say it was the lamb rice is the you said it was better than your mom this was my mom i apologize i'm gonna go with the go to maroti for me um like a perfect breakfast because it was actually like lighter than you would think yeah i gotta go with the devil shrimp that sizzling hot devilish plate that almost killed us this is the top one huh yeah this is the this is the stuff how many times you had this in your life thousands maybe wow i really taste those uh the spices oh my gosh look at this honey and yogurt oh that was good i gotta say that that was my favorite i loved all the desserts though i actually really like that mango mousse all right shinu where did we land we landed a little stream on the corner of victory and seabro on statin island it's little Sri Lanka it is little but we got a lot of stuff in this one spot baby Sri Lanka baby stream all right what are we looking at i gotta see Sri Lankan Russia and i see seilan curry over this this place my mom will always come here to get some quick Sri Lankan bites for us like she wants some like string hoppers done quickly so come here grab some bring it back home we got a quick dinner i see de Blasio i see bourdain on the wall all right we got two restaurants we're gonna hit them up quick we're gonna order a couple things from each spot let's do it this is the the herald and kumar pairing is this the best Sri Lankan food yes i'm the best i'm the one so you had to tell me are you very confident because anthony bourdain ate here but what's good enough for bourdain is good enough for us all right this is our restaurant please all right so we have our Sri Lankan kind of lunch food yes you got the roll with the egg in it that's that's so that's the real egg roll because there's an egg inside of it real egg roll lunch just rice some dal some onions sambol chicken this is coconut sambol oh i'm really excited i had that a dosa man in washington's wow it is it's got a cake it's a little spicier here i feel like i really like this mix plate because it's actually not that heavy it's not too creamy um it's it is still pretty spicy but it's actually pretty light for me i'm gonna go ahead and give this a five out of five this was good hitting on a whole another level she's trying to she's trying to pep talk to me yeah i can't eat coconut this is the street food from some street guys okay we got a fish roll we got an onion roll he says there's an egg roll the main thing that i think we're looking for out of all this is right here shinu can you break down this coconut uh roti you got a coconut roti yeah so this is like basically a staple of Sri Lankan you have some breakfast lunch dinner it's really easy to make my mom makes it all the time on sundays coconut roti this is actually really soft and good like usually it's kind of like a bit harder i like this one a lot like these are what my mom calls malupang usually called fish buns so one has fish one has spicy onions in it malupang right fish curry but i've never had one in my life it's good guys these two spots that we went to say lon curry a new asha restaurant guys definitely check them out if you ever come to stan island little Sri lanka flavors i've never had before all right you guys we've arrived at the Sri Lankan grocery and uh one thing that i want to point out is how cool the Sinhalese language looks yeah these are all like sounds so it's all phonetic right so it's not like a bc these are just like sounds of like words you would say let's head into the grocery hey you know what i noticed uh and i saw this in a video um sometimes when Sri lanka people they're saying yes they actually say they go side to side for yeah so this it could be yes but in the u.s we might think it's no next city all right you guys we are pretty much near the end of our Sri lanka full crawl through little Sri lanka in stan island uh we got some Sri lanka snacks from the store what is this lemon puff elephant house popsicle what's this it's a all toughie what do you think it is like about that makes Sri lanka so interesting you were talking about how the Portuguese the Dutch the British um there's some other ethnicities there's some Chinese living Sri lanka yeah i mean like Sri lanka has a lot of different cultures that like have influenced it it is its own kind of like i think it really wants to be its own thing which is own peoples its own identities uh and like all that it's come together to make us feel like a diaspora as we move into this time in america where everybody wants to be seen everybody wants a representation every type of gender ethnicity community identity right like are you with that like yo i think we've got to be as nuanced as possible or is there some sense you're like i just want to make it simple for people it would be a disservice to like like my parents and what they work for and like like so like what they believe in me to be like that's all cool like whatever it is it is like the nuance is what allows you to like find the beauty and culture right like first gen immigrants we have like the privilege of having nuance we're like our parents weren't allowed to have that because they just had to like figure out i mean a foreign land like how do i survive but i think it depends i think that if the more assimilated second gen they almost start to view it just like the dominant narrative which is painting groups with broad brushes and that's like what we're doing in this video right now we're trying to like show that everybody's an individual but also show that it doesn't have to be like in a contentious way yo i gotta say real quick these sesame balls are rock art yeah these are like i can't do chinese guys end up eating i like the flavor though i mean what are you trying to do with your art or what do you even want people to know yeah because at some point if we are trying to um fill people's minds with these new identities and all these nuances sometimes we have to boil it down sometimes we have to simplify right sometimes we have to simplify the message and the mission and everybody can have one but what what is like the message and mission here that as you would say as a shri lankan america yeah i mean i think in my own art i try my best to like be unapologetically so like lakruana like that setup that style is what i want my art to be it's also like the beauty of that culture like what that culture is like the love that i get from like my family and friends all people that i feel like are shri lankan i think a lot of people know that shri lankans are like a warm welcoming group of people who like if you come into our house and we'll take care of you're gonna eat well you're gonna drink you're gonna like you don't need anything when you come to our home can you make any last words uh i do have the last shri lanka because i know you you knew about it but you hadn't really been out i expected it to be way more similar to be honest which was like again like pretty pretty shitty of me to do i think the biggest thing is also just learning like how like the the hospitality of it i think is a lot was like super cool to see you can follow me at indian maizel on instagram we're at feneitraconte on tiktok you can follow my work on at shinook just my regular name s h e n u q e on instagram or check out my website yo shinook what's your last name tisera oh tisera is that it is that is that a foreign last name or is that it's not shri hojiki's last name all right everybody thank you so much for watching that shri lankan episode in stan island yo shout out to shinook v v you guys showed us around we got to dive into the culture in the comments down below let me know one what you guys know about shri lanka food or culture and two let us know another ethnic enclave around the new york new jersey ish area that you guys would want us to check out because uh taking these trips out you know it does take time but it's usually worth it all right everybody thanks for watching and until next time we out peace