 Miles Clements
Wadiya turns tropical the second you pass through its doors.
Consuming all of one wall is a multi-canvas mural depicting a neon beach
scene. Stationed at the restaurant’s center is a cash register shaded by
the thatched roof of a seaside shack.
And creeping out from a corner is a fake, gangling tree, its limbs
unnecessarily groping for some sun. Wadiya is a dedicated design — one
that swaps the Anaheim restaurant’s strip mall surroundings for the
paradise of Sri Lanka’s island style.
After Wadiya chef-owner Chintheka Ganasekera spent years behind the
steam tables and hotel pans of the catering business, his utopian vision
became a reality mere months ago. That Wadiya is Orange County’s sole
Sri Lankan restaurant only seems to inspire the kitchen: It doesn’t
filter or blunt its cooking, instead proudly presenting a cuisine that,
even with its Indian and Indonesian influences, remains completely
distinct.
 `Lamprais’, a hybrid dish of Dutch origins, is an essential here. At
first sight it looks like a gift, the `lamprais’ banana-leaf exterior
folded up like wrapping paper.
Tear open that shell and you’ll find plenty of presents inside: a bed
of basmati rice topped with tender roast chicken, caramelized onions hit
with a hint of heat, strips of eggplant rendered down to a dark,
date-like sweetness, a hard-boiled egg and a fish croquette. Served on
the street, the banana leaf becomes a biodegradable delivery device that
affords the dish some portability. But at Wadiya, the banana leaf has a
more dramatic role to reveal an excellent meal that can easily feed two.
Similar to the `lamprais’ is the persistently spicy ‘biriyani’. It’s
another offering built upon rice, which in this case is stained a faint
orange from a pinch of saffron and chiles. Molded into a
plate-dominating pyramid, the rice is studded with cashews, raisins,
onions and either crisp fried chicken, mutton or vegetables. All of the
restaurant’s renditions are good, but expect them to have some heat —
the `biriyani’ can sting.
If you’re looking to dodge the burn, order the `ambul thiyal’, a
slightly sour fish curry. Draped over buttery blocks of tuna, the curry
earns its distinctive flavour from goraka, a banana-yellow fruit related
to the mangosteen. Goraka has a citrus-like tang that recalls equal
parts tamarind and lemongrass. Because that flavour is carefully
moderated, it gives the `ambul thiyal’ a nice taste.
For a hands-on experience, try the hoppers. They arrive in bunches,
bowl-shaped pancakes of fermented rice flour into which you spoon
curries and spicy sambals. There isn’t just a single iteration, either —
some hoppers are cooked with eggs cracked into their concave centers,
while others are formed from rice noodles curled into coaster-sized
circles.
Hoppers make it onto the regular menu, but they’re best eaten during
the restaurant’s Friday dinner buffet when they’re bused to the table
like fresh tortillas.
Wadiya also offers a weekday lunch buffet and weekend dinner buffets,
though the restaurant’s best dishes are usually those found on the menu.
Still, it’s during those all-you-can-eat hours that the restaurant is
most animated, filled with families rearranging tables to accommodate
time-insensitive relatives and couples angling to taste each other’s
plates.
Most meals here end with a shot of jaggery, an unrefined sugar found
in both the eponymous jaggery cake and the `watalappan’, a toffee-coloured
custard.
But for those trying to shake the sugar, even a final sip of ginger
beer can provide a fitting end at Wadiya — a sweet soda that bubbles
with a touch of the tropics.
(Los Angeles Times)
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