Farmers Branch can be a trek for some folks—particularly for lunch—but plenty of people are stopping into SpicyZest for a taste of its authentic Sri Lankan cuisine any day of the week.
On a Wednesday afternoon, groups large and small are seated inside the café run by chef-owner Nimidu Senaratne and his wife, Chamari Walliwalagedara. Together, they serve a mix of traditional Sri Lankan dishes and fusion options.
There aren’t many Sri Lankan restaurants in Dallas-Fort Worth, but SpicyZest is well-loved: in 2021, Thrillist named it one of the best suburban restaurants in North Texas, and the Dallas Observer named Nimidu the best chef in Dallas in 2017.
It made sense to order a mix of dishes for lunch, so we started off with the Sri Lankan roll, made of seasoned ground meat rolled in a thin homemade pancake and breadcrumbs, and then deep fried. It’s served with a tangy brown sauce made with a mix of dates, limes, tomato sauce, and other spices, and the result is something that closely resembles barbecue sauce. When dipped, the sauce counters the savory parts of the roll, and the crispy fried shell delivers a perfect crunch. The only downside is that the order only comes with one roll.
The main dishes we ordered, the deviled and the lumprais (sometimes spelled as “lamprais”), were under the Sri Lankan specialties section of the menu. For most of the dishes here, patrons have their choice of protein and a spice level from one to five, but Senaratne says five isn’t as close to how spicy a normal Sri Lankan meal can get. We chose the deviled with chicken (spice level three) and lamb lumprais (no spice).
In the deviled, chicken is seasoned overnight, deep-fried for about a minute, and then pan-fried with bell peppers and white and green onions. All of it is coated in a thick sauce packed with ingredients like ginger, garlic, soy sauce, tomato sauce, and plenty of spice depending on the level. The deviled chicken is served with a side of rice and a lime wedge; the rice is necessary to counter any kind of spice, but at level three it wasn’t too overwhelming. Walliwalagedara says the deviled is one of the most popular SpicyZest dishes. Traditionally, the dish is so packed with hot peppers that it sometimes looks dark, giving it its bewitched name.
The lumprais is a traditional Sri Lankan rice dish that eats like a feast. The rice is pan-fried with cashews, mustard seeds, curry leaves, cinnamon, cloves, and garlic, and the lamb is tossed into the mix. Both the rice and lamb are served wrapped in a banana leaf with other tasty bites: a fried hard-boiled egg, sweet plantain curry, a breaded and fried ball of ground meat, onion sambol (caramelized onions), and eggplant moju, which closely resembles a chutney or relish. Senaratne says the dish is normally eaten with your hands and fingers, but newbies like me can resort to a fork and spoon.
It’s tempting to try to get a bit of everything in each bite. The sweetness of the plantain curry was a delightful palate cleanser between the spoonfuls of rice and lamb. Eggplant moju also paired well with the rice, and for a change of pace, a chunk of egg or the breaded meat. The meal is balanced and packed with flavor. It was also a lot of food, so I ended up taking the other half home.
The regular menu at the Farmers Branch location is served throughout the week, but weekends brings out the lunch buffet, which Senaratne fills with a mix of Sri Lankan dishes. At the Richland Hills location, a barbecue buffet is served on Saturday nights.
If you haven’t tried Sri Lankan food, or are simply curious about what it could taste like, you won’t be disappointed here. Our waiter explained the menu to us when we asked for recommendations. There’s also a full bar and a grocery store at the back filled with biscuits, spices, and trinkets, if you want to browse while you wait for your meal.
It was a delicious introduction for me, and I plan on coming back.
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