Rambutan, one of London’s most eagerly awaited launches, finally has an opening date: March 17. The restaurant is the debut project from award-winning British-Sri Lankan food writer and pop-up sensation Cynthia Shanmugalingam, and will take up residence in Borough Market this spring. The restaurant was first announced in June 2022.
“Rambutan has been a long time in the making,” Shanmugalingam admits. “I can’t wait to get everyone tasting the food I have been lucky enough to eat all my life. London’s Sri Lankan diaspora is doing amazing things in music, fashion and art right now, and I hope that with Rambutan, I can add food to that list. It’s really exciting to draw on our ancient heritage, but also to create dishes that are entirely new.”
Shanmugalingam has taken inspiration from far and wide, whether the recipes of her aunts in Coventry or the Sri Lankan-based chefs and home cooks who have entrusted their own family secrets to her. Ingredients will be sourced from Sri Lanka and the food market right on the restaurant’s doorstep.
For diners, this might mean a snacky starter such as chicken sambal bun or fried mutton roll, followed by a curry made with British ingredients: Flourish Farm vegetables from Cambridgeshire or native breed livestock from the Yorkshire Dales. Elsewhere on the menu, turbot heads come with a lemongrass and pandan sodhi broth, while slow-braised black pork is imbued with the flavour of blackened and burnt curry powder. To drink, there will be low-intervention wines and south London beers as well as a bar serving the Sri Lankan arrack banned by colonial British rule.
The focus of the open kitchen will be a traditional fire aduppu stove of the sort found in the village kitchens of the Sri Lankan countryside. This one, however, will be enclosed by a green marble counter. There will also be tables and chairs made from sustainable teak, handmade ceramic tiles by Tamil ceramicist Gayi Soori and one-of-a-kind-pieces commissioned by independent Sri Lankan designers.
“I believe I’m the first Sri Lankan Tamil woman to open a restaurant in central London,” Shanmugalingam says. “It’s a big honour to be able to represent the extraordinary creativity and warm hospitality of all the women who taught me how to cook. To do it in London’s oldest and most famous food market surrounded by all this amazing produce is a bit of a dream come true.”
