Sri Lanka

The everyday feast is 'rice and curry', and it is never just one thing: a mound of red rice ringed by half a dozen small curries — lentil dhal, young jackfruit, a fish curry, and a fierce, coral-red pol sambol of grated coconut and chilli — eaten with the fingers of the right hand, everything mixed a little as you go. Sri Lanka shares deep roots with southern India, but the island spices to its own tune: hotter, coconut-rich, and built on the cinnamon and cardamom that first drew the world's traders to these shores.

Breakfast means hoppers — bowl-shaped fermented rice pancakes, lacy and crisp at the rim, an egg often cracked into the hollow — or string hoppers, little steamed nests of rice noodles. The street's headline act is kottu: roti shredded and tossed on a hot griddle with vegetables and meat, the metal blades beating out a clatter you hear from streets away. Coconut runs through all of it, right down to the thambili, an orange king coconut lopped open and drunk on the spot. Chase the heat with a cold Lion lager or a nip of local arrack.