The Little Sri Lankan

2025 update: Excellent news for Sri Lankan food fans; this excellent pop-up now has a monthly residence at Miru Mills in Stockport. It’s just £45 for four courses, including a welcome cocktail on arrival. Rest assured, the dynamic duo will be using seasonal and local produce where possible.

The first date there is the 27th February, and it’ll be held on a Thursday each month (dates TBC, with a brand new menu every two months. Limited tickets for each sitting so act quick, booking link below.

Stockport is on the up. Every week, there’s a new opening or event that proves the area is becoming a new hot spot for food lovers. But there’s one superb Stockport-based food experience that you’ll find popping up all over the North: The Little Sri Lankan. We signed up for one of their recent sell-out pop-up events at Isca Wines, the small but highly-regarded organic wine bar and bottle shop in Levenshulme.

The Little Sri Lankan is a two-person team who specialise in, you guessed it, Sri Lankan cuisine – a style of cooking sorely under-represented in Manchester and the North. The duo consist of Malanie Tillekeratne, a Sri Lankan-born chef and wonderfully engaging hostess – she introduces each dish with a wealth of easy charm and the kind of knowledge money can’t buy – and her partner Michael, who does a sterling job manning the kitchen.

For curious food fans, this ticks all boxes: unique tastes using high-quality ingredients, beautifully prepared. Happily, there’s a vegan alternative for each option, so everyone’s included.

The opening dish, roast paan, pol sambol and whipped seeni butter, is an eye-opening take on bread and butter, involving spicy, sweet and aromatic taste profiles, with a moreish bundle of shredded, textured coconut relish. It’s deceptively simple to the eye, consisting of multiple layers of remarkably satisfying flavours.

Next, a spiced potato roll. This is a big crunchy morsel, packed with spices and belly-warming carbs, perfect dipped into the dollop of Archie’s chilli sauce on the side. In fact, it’s so big I make the executive decision to take most home and eat the next day, heated up (reader, it was just as good).

The most mind-blowing course is the main, a heady concoction of – take a breath – beef smore, green bean badum, parippu, parsley sambol and bitter gourd salad. The beef smore could be described as a clever cross between a traditional Britsh dish of beef and onions and a beef curry, but surpasses both, thanks to an expert array of intoxicating and precision-placed spices.

But that’s only one element of this gloriously multi-faceted dish. Texture plays a huge role: a stir fry of crunchy vegetables (the pleasingly-named green bean badum); the creamy parippu (a rich mash of split pulses); the bright, potent parsley sambol; and the sharp bitter gourd salad – a refreshing mixed of chopped up tomatoes, bitter gourd and red onions. Oh, and some white rice just to keep things steady.

Following this hearty rustic delight, dessert is a work of art: poached peaches topped with a white chocolate and cardamom creameaux, dotted with nuts, crumb and mint leaves, all mixed in with raspberry and kithul (a floral Sri Lankan honey).

Not to get too geopolitical in a regional food review, but Sri Lanka has had a lot of varying influences over the years, meaning the food is a fascinating concoction of global flavours and homegrown ingredients. For non-Sri Lankans, it’ll be one of the most exciting and memorable meals you’ll try all year.

The Little Sri Lankan do pop-ups all over the North, and even host special dining events at their home in South Manchester. For full details, check their website below. Word to the wise: sign up quickly as they tend to sell out.