Paparazzi don’t tend to swarm to Levenshulme - no massive necessity, really - but back when Malanie Tillekeratne worked at Scott’s in Mayfair, she’d have to scrap her way through the scrum on a regular basis as she left work of an evening. Paps would gather at the upscale fish restaurant, where Malanie worked as a pastry chef, to catch a glimpse of some of the celebrities who would be sucking down oysters and champagne inside.
“You’d see Tom Hanks, everyone,” he says, chatting - she likes a chat - outside Isca, the natural wine shop and restaurant on Stockport Road where she and her husband Michael are hosting one of their regular supper clubs. “You’d come out and they’d be snapping and flashing, then they’d realise it was just a chef, and they’d just stop straight away!”
They call themselves The Little Sri Lankan. Malanie is little, and Sri Lankan, so it all makes a lot of sense. She was born in Colombo, and moved to the UK when she was four. She met Michael, also a classically-trained chef, through a dating website when she was studying hospitality management in Bournemouth. He saw she was a chef too, so they met up for a drink and have been together ever since.
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The Little Sri Lankan is perhaps as far from the glitz and glam of Scott’s as you can get. This is proper home cooking, much of it derived from the recipes passed through Malanie’s family, and inimitable Marion, Malanie’s mum, a font of cookery knowledge. When Michael met her for the first time at the family’s home near Romford - encountering Sri Lankan food for the first time too - his mind was well and truly blown.
“Sri Lankans are very welcoming people, and her mum welcomed me straight away,” he says. “10 years ago, I had no idea about Sri Lankan food, I knew a little about the history, but nothing about the food. My background was classic French and Italian food. When she cooked for me for the first time, it was incredible. I remember thinking I must learn how to do this. I was completely blown away.”
All of the recipes come from her family, her mum, her aunty and her grandmother, and some from her dad’s side too. Her paternal grandmother was a cookery teacher, so there’s a rich seam of recipes running through generations. “My mum’s been very strict with Michael, with his cooking,” Malanie laughs, which she does an awful lot. “She told him ‘you need to learn it properly first, the right way, and only then you can start adjusting things’.
While Sri Lankan food is a true melting pot of influences, down to hundreds of years of Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial rule, cooking it is something else entirely. “It’s so different to European cuisine, there are secrets,” says Malanie. “Take care with turmeric, because it will go bitter. Always roast your curry powders. We use fenugreek to thicken sauces, but be careful, because that will go bitter too. It’s all a balancing act.
“I re-learned a lot of these things too, like from when I’d help my mum cook for parties at home growing up. We were put to work, and learned a lot. I remember those dishes and watching her cook. When my parents came here in the 70s, they had a little side business to make some extra money, making cutlets and patties. We’re a cooking family. It’s just what we do.”
Something of a gourmet herself, Marion had been attending supper clubs hosted by famous food writer, blogger and chef Luiz Hara, who opens up his own home in London to the public and hosts events showcasing different cuisines. They got on so well, he asked her to do four days of Sri Lankan supper clubs at his house, so naturally, not being a chef herself, Malanie and Michael were recruited to help out. It went down a storm.
It was then that Malanie and Michael decided that they might need to start doing this for a living. Moving from London, and then a spell in Oxford, they landed in Levenshulme a few years later as jobbing chefs, planning to do The Little Sri Lankan on the side. When the pandemic hit, it accelerated the whole process, so they started doing takeaway and meal kits, as most restaurants did.
They also started regularly plotting up at Levenshulme’s food market, when it reopened post-lockdown, doing breville-style Sri Lankan-inspired toasties stuffed with delights like red chicken curry and beef smore, a pot roasted beef but with the added western twist of Lancashire cheese.
“It blew up!” says Malanie. “But my mum was like ‘what’s all this? What’s this fusion?!’ She understands though, that it’s about introducing people to this food with something they might recognise.”
At Isca last week, Malanie and Michael had a full house, spilling out onto the pavement. To begin, it was a plate of cutlets, like croquettes, golden and stuffed with jackfruit, potato and red roasted curry spices, along with a mutton pancake roll, slow-braised mutton and potato, wrapped in a pancake, covered in breadcrumbs and fried, and smoky, smoking hot homemade chilli sauce.
A dazzling selection of curries followed; a fried pork belly curry, pleasingly not shy with the fat, and slow-cooked with tamarind, cinnamon and dark, roasted curry spices. There was a butternut squash and mustard curry, soothing with coconut milk, and a classic parippu, a restorative dhal of red lentils and rampe (ram-peh), the fragrant pandan leaves.
The chutneys - and what chutneys - threatened to steal the show - a carrot relish, and an aubergine pickle, both complex and thrilling, all mopped up with soft fenugreek rotis. For dessert, a coconut and kitul jaggery baked custard called watalappan, a pot of deep joy, scattered with cashews, and an irresistible cashew and coconut biscuit. It’s soaring, inspiring food.
The plan is to soon start their own café, not a restaurant, and ideally in Levenshulme, which they both love. “My big plan is to have a café and Sri Lankan bakery. Have the toasties, and serve Sri Lankan tea. And keep the supper clubs for the evenings,” Malanie says. 'Share food, spread love' is the message that they want out there, accompanying their cooking, a phrase tucked away on all their menus. It's sums everything up perfectly.
“We’re showing Sri Lankan cuisine just as it should be, and showing off all that we’ve learned,” Michael goes on. “It’s a legacy for Malanie’s family. I just think that’s a good thing. Something for the family to carry on. We want something that we can build, then pass on through our own family.”
You can find out when the next Little Sri Lankan supper club is happening at their website.
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