“It’s got the feel of a New York restaurant,” comments my pal when we sit down to dinner at Rambutan, a recently opened Sri Lankan restaurant on Stoney Street by Borough Market.
She’s just returned from a foodie jaunt around NYC and, having spent some time there myself, I see what she means. It’s the buzz, I think. It’s got to be. We’re among the lucky ones, sat around the counter where a tumble of woks and skewers balanced precariously over fired-up coals are churning up the restaurant’s latest menu of specials. Beyond us, every table of the dining room and downstairs bar is taken, and the atmosphere inside Rambutan’s terracotta walls is excitable, infectious, electric.
Chef and cookbook author Cynthia Shanmugalingam first teased her offering at Rambutan (named after the tropical, spiky fruit) last summer. Already in charge of the Stoney Street premises, she served takeaway soft serve ice creams in unusual, eastern flavours while the restaurant was under construction – and a rotation of said ices now forms the dessert portion of the restaurant’s menu.
Rambutan specialises in dishes from the northern Tamil region of Sri Lanka, where the Coventry-born-and-raised chef’s family hail from. Every summer, Cynthia would visit her family in the Jaffna province, where the village’s women taught her how to cook. Eventually, she knew she had to share these flavours with foodies back home, and so she released a recipe book, also called Rambutan, in 2022 before opening the restaurant this year.
The counter is the place to sit if you’re dining in a pair or alone. Not only are these front-row seats a chance to watch Rambutan’s live-fire cooking in action, but if you haven’t already pored over the restaurant’s Instagram page and arrived knowing your order by heart, you’ll find inspiration in the bowls of colourful curries and impossibly fluffy rounds of roti being slung over the counter.
There was momentary disappointment when our waiter informed us that the ‘pandarita’ (a Sri Lankan twist on a mezcal margarita, essentially) was off the menu because of a missing mezcal and tequila delivery. We had to take a minute, so sure were we that this cocktail would be an absolute banger, but eventually we pulled ourselves together and made do with a banana negroni – a sweeter cousin of the traditional serve – which proved tasty.
Of course it was, because there were no duds on Rambutan’s small plate-led menu. A ‘short eat’ of buttermilk fried chicken offered a fiery start. Served with traditional Sri Lankan sambol and fried bread, it was a clever fusion of eastern and western concepts – a nod to bread smothered in pâté, if you like. If it’s available on your visit, the sticky pineapple curry is not to be missed, regardless of which side of the ‘pineapple in savoury dishes’ debate you typically fall on. It’s tangy, sour and original.
A dry curry of pork had the sort of slow-cooked smokiness you’d more typically associate with proper Texan barbecue, but a rub of spices sung of its eastern heritage. A gentle curry of Devon ray wing cooked in mustard and turmeric was another subtle highlight, as was the coconut, lemongrass and pandan dal – wholly deserving of its own section on the menu. Heavy on the curry leaves, it’s transportative, shuttling our taste buds to its origin country with every bite.
Here, roti is not just a carb to soak up your curry but a dish in its own right: buttery, flaky and hot off the griddle. From the steaming mouth of a giant cauldron came a steady flow of rice, too.
Each dish came prettily presented, with deep green shoots providing a carpet for drier dishes and stoney, traditional-looking bowls housing curries. Six plates in, we were stuffed. Fortunately, this moment coincided with our 1.5-hour booking being up, and even though we could have happily lingered over a soft serve or a second cocktail, with a queue of expectant diners snaking from the door, it was time to go.
So we left with plenty to come back for, but by the time we do, Cynthia will likely have a new menu on the go, presenting more agonising choices over which dishes we can bear to miss. A look online three short days after our visit confirms change is already afoot in the kitchen. There’s a sense you’ll never be able to complete Rambutan, no matter how regularly you go. But neither can you have a bad meal there, because what Cynthia and her team are serving, through their Tamil flavours, is culinary perfection.
The damage (for 2):
Buttermilk fried chicken and pol sambol pan = £7.20
Red pineapple curry with mustard seeds = £11.60
Devon ray wing, mustard & turmeric curry = 14.2
Dingley dell black pork dry curry = £15.5
Coconut, lemongrass and pandan dal = £7.80
Samba rice = £3.50
Roti = £4
Banana negroni x 2 = £19.80
TOTAL: £83.60
Food & Drink: 5 STARS
Ambience: 5 STARS
Value: 5 STARS
Disabled access: YES
Disabled toilet: NO
Booking: YES
Rambutan, 10 Stoney Street, London SE1 9AD.
Tuesday, 5pm – 10pm; Wednesday – Friday, 12pm – 3pm & 5pm – 10pm; Saturday 12pm – 10pm.
