Order the kottu roti at Manjula Fernando’s new Hunter Street eatery Kottoo, and the muffled clang of a spatula rapidly chopping roti in a wok will ring out from the kitchen.

“Traditionally you do it on a hotplate with two metal scrapers, but that’s too loud for this shop,” Fernando tells Broadsheet.

“Kottu” in the Tamil language is an onomatopoeic word for “chop”. The dish was originally created to use up leftover roti and curry. “You take a roti, chop it up and cook it with eggs, vegetables and curry, chopping as it cooks,” says Fernando.

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The result is a delicious, textural hash that combines chicken, beef, pork or jackfruit curries with roti and egg. Kottoo also does three cheese varieties, with a milk-based cheese sauce added to the mixture. Fernando describes it as the spaghetti carbonara of kottu roti.

Fernando made his name in Sydney’s Sri Lankan community serving traditional fare at Dish in the western Sydney suburb of Toongabbie. (He’d previously worked as a chef on board Kerry Packer’s private yacht.) In 2018 he opened a more refined version of Dish in Glebe. The CBD was the next step.

“Before, people didn’t know the difference between Sri Lankan and Indian food,” he says. “But travel has changed that, and now they understand Sri Lankan food.”

Customers will find many of the same dishes at Hunter Street as they’d see in Glebe. There are golden dosas accompanied by chicken or fish; rice with perfectly spicy curries; biriyani; and roti wraps filled with devilled beef, which is made using a tangy Sri Lankan mustard.

There are also hoppers – bowl-shaped crepes made from fermented rice flour. Kottoo’s version runs the gamut of textures, from the crisp, laced edges, to the chewy, coconutty centre of the bowl.

Everything is made in-house, including the notoriously tricky roti. It’s served alongside curries and sambols and arrives hot, ready to scoop up yellow lentils or chunks of spicy chicken.

Fernando says that although CBD customers might not be as familiar with “authentic” Sri Lankan cuisine as his Toongabbie customer base was (Toongabbie has a large Sri Lankan population), he still wanted to stick to traditional food rather than experimenting.

“My aim is to serve authentic Sri Lankan food,” says Fernando. “When I opened Glebe, I was thinking about whether I wanted to do fusion – but I thought no, I should go with Sri Lankan street food as it was. It got popular, and people like it, the authentic food.”

Kottoo is a good spot for a quick lunch or takeaway, and the menu of Sri Lankan soft drinks plus iced coffee and faluda (a pretty drink of vanilla ice-cream and rose syrup finished with a sprinkling of chewy basil seeds) are the ideal accompaniment. Kottoo has also started serving dinner on Thursday and Friday evenings from 5pm, with the option to BYO alcohol.

Kottoo, which is next door to the perennially busy Malay Chinese Takeaway, tempts customers in with the aroma of curries wafting out the door. Kandyan dancers masks, each representing a different devil, bring colour to the charming space, and the quick “kottu, kottu, kottu” clang of the spatula from the kitchen tells you food is on the way.

Kottoo
50 Hunter Street, Sydney

Hours:
Mon to Wed 10.30am–3pm
Thu & Fri 10.30am–9.30pm

facebook.com/kottoo