Hoppers' Sri Lankan Kari

Hoppers, the Sri-Lankan street-food based restaurant has joined its sister restaurants Brigadiers and Gymkhana in offering delivery during the 2020 pandemic. I was keen to try it having previously enjoyed their food eatin in, and while their delivery food is not as good it was well worth a try.

Food from Hoppers: roti and curries

Our order and the cost

For two people we ordered:

So this was a total cost of about £51. We had a fairly large dinner out of this order, and then added our own rice and more vegetables to the leftovers for another dinner the next day. I think this still feels fairly expensive though, because I think we would have struggled to make a less-expensive order into a nice meal even knowing this - despite the fact we almost got two meals out of this order.

What I liked

Some of the karis have really excellent sauces, the Mutton kari in particular had an excellently rich sauce which we both really enjoyed.

There are some interesting dishes to try on the menu, such as the bone marrow curry, which has a coconut based sauce. It’s always a pleasure to try some more unusual flavours in a meal, and although I’m not sure I’d order this dish again I was very glad to try it.

Hoppers has a focus on the combination of the curries with some kind of side dish, and the roti which are the focus of this on the takeaway menu are excellent. They have a lovely flaky texture and a nice buttery taste, which actually made me think a bit of croissant.

What to watch out for

It’s in the name… but it’s not on the menu. Hoppers were the star kari-accompaniment on the menu in-restaurant, but they are not available at all for delivery, which is a shame. Given their bowl shape I guess it was judged to be impossible to transport them without ruining them.

There’s a version of the roti with added egg - presumably to try to make up for not being able to get the hopper with added egg (which was excellent). I usually love anything with egg, but I think the roti was better without it.

The devilled paneer was the weak link of the dishes we had. Although the flavours were nice we felt there was too little sauce and too much onion/pepper/vegetable type stuff in the dish. We thought we might be able to make good use of this by putting it in with the other karis ( which generally had very little in the way of veg in), but the flavour of the dish was too strong and didn’t mix well with the karis.

Ordering recommendations