Take the ferry, walk ten minutes up Victory Boulevard, and you’re in one of the densest pockets of Sri Lankan food anywhere outside Colombo. Here’s how to eat your way through Staten Island’s Little Sri Lanka.

Most New Yorkers ride the Staten Island Ferry for the free skyline view and ride it right back. They’re missing the best reason to make the trip: a short walk from the St. George terminal, the neighborhoods of Tompkinsville and Stapleton hold the largest Sri Lankan community in the United States — and a stretch of Victory Boulevard and Bay Street so thick with curry, hoppers, and short eats that it’s earned the name Little Sri Lanka. The food here is its own thing entirely: brighter and more fiery than Indian food, built on coconut, curry leaf, pandan, and Maldive fish, with a love of sour, heat, and crunch all at once. If you’ve never had it, this is the place in New York to start.

Quick Bites

• New Asha (322 Victory Blvd) — The counter-service institution; point at the steam-table buffet and eat for cheap
• Lakruwana (668 Bay St) — The showpiece sit-down spot with a famous weekend buffet served on a banana leaf
• Ceylon Curry (324 Victory Blvd) — Modern storefront where Sri Lankan regulars come for authentic home cooking at cheap prices
• Sagara Food City (Victory Blvd) — Restaurant and grocery in one; eat, then stock up on spices and snacks
• Neighborhood bakeries — Grab short eats and a snack for the ferry home

What makes Sri Lankan food different

If your only reference point is the Indian restaurant down the block, Sri Lankan cooking will surprise you. The island sits off the southern tip of India, and while there’s overlap, the flavors run in a different direction. Coconut is everywhere — in the curries, grated into sambols, pressed into milk that mellows the heat. Rice and curry is the backbone meal: a mound of rice ringed by small dishes of dhal, a vegetable curry or two, a meat or fish curry, and a fierce condiment or two. The heat can be serious, but it’s balanced by sour tamarind, the funk of Maldive fish (dried, smoked tuna shaved over dishes like a savory dust), and the cooling pull of coconut.

The dishes to know: hoppers (bowl-shaped, lacy pancakes made from fermented rice batter, often served with a soft egg cooked into the center), string hoppers (steamed nests of rice noodles), kottu roti (flatbread chopped on a griddle with vegetables, egg, and meat — you can usually hear it being made), and lamprais (rice, curries, and a meatball baked together in a banana leaf, a Dutch-colonial holdover). Wash it down with a glass of faluda or a king coconut if it’s on offer.

Where to eat

New Asha — 322 Victory Boulevard. Start here. Open since 1999, New Asha is the neighborhood’s beloved counter-service institution, and it’s about as unpretentious as a restaurant gets: a glass case of steam-table curries, a few tables, and an owner happy to walk a newcomer through what’s what. You point, they pile rice and your choices onto a plate, and you’ve eaten extraordinarily well for very little money. The day’s offerings rotate, but expect chicken and fish curries, dhal, jackfruit, and a rotating cast of vegetable dishes, plus hoppers and string hoppers at dinner. It’s the platonic ideal of a cheap, real meal — and the single best entry point to the whole neighborhood.

Lakruwana — 668 Bay Street. If New Asha is the everyday spot, Lakruwana is the occasion. Founded by the late Lakruwana Wijesinghe and now run by his family, the restaurant is covered floor to ceiling in Sri Lankan murals, masks, sculptures, and flags — it feels like stepping into a small museum that happens to serve dinner. The draw is the weekend buffet (Saturday and Sunday afternoons into the evening), an all-you-can-eat spread of curries, sambols, and rice served traditionally on a banana leaf for around $16. It earned a spot in the Michelin Guide for good reason. Hours are limited and it’s closed Mondays, so check before you go and plan around the weekend buffet if you can.

Ceylon Curry — 324 Victory Boulevard. A modern, welcoming storefront a few doors from New Asha, Ceylon Curry has become a neighborhood favorite for exactly the reason that matters most: Sri Lankan regulars come from near and far for the authentic flavors of home at cheap prices. The menu runs deep on curries, kottu roti, and hoppers, and the room fills up at peak hours — a good sign. If you want a sit-down meal where you order off a menu rather than navigate a buffet, this is the move.

Sagara Food City — Victory Boulevard. Part restaurant, part grocery, Sagara is the spot that lets you take the neighborhood home with you. Eat a plate of rice and curry, then walk the aisles for the building blocks of Sri Lankan cooking — curry powders, dried Maldive fish, pandan, coconut, jaggery, and packaged short eats and sweets. Even if you’re full, it’s worth a browse to understand what’s behind all those curries you just ate.

The bakeries and short-eats stops. Little Sri Lanka isn’t only sit-down restaurants. Tucked between the bigger spots are bakeries and takeaway counters selling short eats — the Sri Lankan answer to a quick snack: fish cutlets, Chinese rolls (a stuffed, crumbed, fried log), mutton rolls, and seeni sambol buns. Grab a few in a paper bag for the ferry ride back to Manhattan; they travel beautifully and cost almost nothing.

How to do the crawl

Take the ferry to St. George (free, and the view is the bonus you came for). It’s about a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk up Victory Boulevard to the heart of the strip, or a quick bus ride if your legs are done. Come hungry on a weekend if Lakruwana’s buffet is the goal, but any day works for New Asha and Ceylon Curry. Bring cash — some of the smaller counters prefer it — and don’t over-order at the first stop; the whole point is grazing across several spots. Hours can be short and a couple of places close one day a week, so a quick call ahead saves a wasted trip.

While you’re on the North Shore, the neighborhood rewards lingering — our Staten Island hidden gems walk through St. George and the North Shore pairs naturally with a Little Sri Lanka food crawl. And if you like these deep dives, we’ve done the same for Tibetan and Nepali food in Jackson Heights and Yemeni food in Bay Ridge.

Sri Lankan food doesn’t get the New York spotlight that ramen or birria do, and that’s exactly why the trip feels like a discovery. Forty minutes from Midtown, you can eat a banana-leaf feast you can’t get anywhere else in the country. The ferry’s free. Go.<