The Coconut Tree, 59 St Paul’s Road, Cheltenham GL50 4JA (01242 465 758). Also in Bristol and Oxford. Dishes £2.50-£8; wines from £17
Eating well is an expression of normality. When we’re not in crisis, we eat well. When we’re not at war, we eat well. It’s also a way of reclaiming normality: of refusing to let the darkness win. It’s why I went to the Coconut Tree in Cheltenham, the original outpost of a small group of places serving what they describe as Sri Lankan street food. A few weeks ago, the island made headlines for the most terrible of reasons: a grim narrative of suicide bombs and body counts. Countries are not defined by atrocity, but by the good things. Great cooking is always one of the good things. A restaurant review cannot defeat terror but, at the very least, talking about the country’s vivid food – its way with coconut, turmeric, cardamom and chilies – is so very much better than talking about all the other stuff we’ve heard from Sri Lanka recently.
The Coconut Tree belongs to five friends who first met at school just outside Colombo, when they were 11. They followed each other to Britain, first to Croydon. I love Croydon. I drive through it often. Some of my best friends have even driven through Croydon. But I do find myself marvelling at the intensity of the culture shock they must have experienced after a life in Colombo. Inexplicably, they all decided to leave Croydon for Cheltenham where, in need of somewhere to live, they were offered the rental of a knackered old pub on the St Paul’s Road in the student area, with a flat above.
Each evening after work they did it up, finally quitting their day jobs and opening it as a restaurant in late 2016. It’s the hospitality business equivalent of Summer Stock, only with less Judy Garland and more fermented rice flour batter. This is a bare-bones fit-out, because any money spent on the room could only have been recouped via the menu pricing and they clearly wanted to keep that low. They don’t do napkins. Instead they give you a roll of kitchen paper. The most expensive dish here is £8 and there’s only one of those. It is cheap and resoundingly cheerful, as are the staff who seem genuinely pleased to see everybody. A special commendation goes to the luscious beard, belonging to one of the original five, which put in a thrilling performance throughout our meal.
Parts of the ceiling are covered with Sri Lankan newspapers. There are high counters and lower tables, with the kind of bench seating men of a certain age like to whine about. There are cushions for those who are proctologically challenged. They now have two more outlets in Bristol and one in Oxford, with another due to open in Cardiff shortly.
It’s easy to see why it’s succeeded. There is a raucous, rough-edged enthusiasm to the food, all of which comes at great speed in white and blue prison-style enamelware. Fat Sister is a hefty pumpkin curry, made with large pieces of squash, cooked until they can be carved with a spoon, in the sort of thick, pungent coconut milk and turmeric sauce that spoon could then stand up in. It costs £4. On the lighter side there’s shredded cabbage with a pleasing crunch, stir-fried with more turmeric, spices and shaved coconut. That costs £3.
There’s a strong fish offering. The words “hot battered spicy cuttlefish” tell you all you need to know, but I’ll tell you more because it’s my job: the deep-fried crunchy strands of cephalopod, the colour of a sunset, are made to sing by the sugary tangles of heavily caramelised onion and spices which shatter under the teeth like butterscotch. I end up running my finger around the bottom of the bowl to get the last bits. I do this a lot, to be fair. I just don’t always admit to it.
The menu declares that there are just eight portions a day of the clay-pot fish, which sounds like a come on. It’s a very effective one, because we order it and are pleased to have done so. The stew bobs with slabs of tuna which have not yet disintegrated in a thick, hot and sour liquor with an unashamedly peppery kick. There are also devilled prawns, their brilliant crimson carapace glazed with a sweet-sour sauce in an even deeper red, which gives the whole dish a vaguely neon glow. The only meat dish we have is the black pork, made with belly in a fighty sauce the colour of night, after lights out. I ask our waitress what’s in that sauce. She tells me it has 18 spices. Which are? No, that’s all we’re getting. Certainly, there’s black pepper in there. An awful lot of black pepper. (For clarity, the menu announces that specific allergy issues will be answered.) I mop with flaky triangular pieces of roti, and I mop again until the enamel glaze is at risk.
The only dish that doesn’t quite do the thing is the hopper, the famously bowl-shaped fermented rice flour and coconut milk pancake. It’s served with a fried egg cooked into the bottom and various relishes including a pungent coconut sambal. It’s certainly a looker. It’s just floppy and not quite up to that served at the eponymous Hoppers, in London. Then again, it’s also cheaper. Plus, with every single dish arriving at once, we probably left it just a little longer than we should have done.
Hopper honour is saved by another one, served folded and still warm, dribbled with golden syrup and held in place by scoops of an almost sorbet-like coconut ice cream. It’s a kind of Sri Lankan crèpe Suzette. There’s also the mellifluously named watalappam, a set coconut pudding with treacle and nutmeg, with a glycaemic index so high you’d need a piece of graph paper the size of a house to plot it. It’s delicious, if unfinishable.
They offer Sri Lankan ales and ginger beers, and local West Country ciders alongside a utilitarian list of wines. They’ll also serve you a turmeric coconut latte and a salted caramel espresso martini. That’s not my idea of a good time, but I won’t judge you if it’s yours. Much. The Coconut Tree manages that rare trick of being totally laid-back and completely on point at the same time. It also happens to tell a terrific story about Sri Lanka; one that comes with a small bill to finish. That’s a perfect happy ending.
News bites
Elsewhere in Cheltenham the evolved Indian restaurant Prithvi, ancient Sanskrit for Mother Earth apparently, has moved into No 38, the boutique hotel which is part of the Lucky Onion group. Dishes I enjoyed there during the Cheltenham Jazz Festival included a chicken-thigh curry with pieces of crispy chicken skin and fenugreek, and a thrilling lamb dish (prithvirestaurant.com).
After much preparation, chefs Andrew Clarke and Doug Sanham last week finally launched the Pilot Light, a campaign targeted at combating the stigma around depression, addiction and mental health issues within the hospitality industry. Find out more at pilotlightcampaign.co.uk.
Signs of continuing strife in the chain-restaurant world. The Restaurant Group, which operates Garfunkel’s and Frankie & Benny’s, plans to offload another 22 sites, bringing to 44 the number it is looking to sell. The dim sum chain Ping Pong is closing the two branches it held in London shopping centres, and Pizza Express has seen pre-tax losses almost double to £55m.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
