29-05-2025
Spiciest food in Ottawa? Thilaks Sri Lankan Cuisine packs heat and heart
2924 Carling Ave. (basement of Manila Mart), 613-721-6746,
Open: Daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Prices: most dishes $12 to $18
Access: Restaurant is down a flight of stairs
The texts that I sent my dining companion about the restaurant in my sights included some warnings.
'Very spicy. But I like it,' I wrote.
'I usually like spicy,' she wrote back.
'Another warning: it's in a pretty homely, beat-up basement.'
'I won't get all fancied up!'
'But it's authentic. May be the spiciest food in town.'
'I'm game.'
'Don't say you weren't warned.'
'Sounds like an adventure!'
Relieved that my companion would approach our lunch with the right attitude, I met her at Thilaks Sri Lankan Cuisine, an underground hole-in-the-wall beneath the Manila Mart Filipino grocery store on Carling Avenue, just east of the Cineplex Cinema Ottawa complex.
Before we ate in Thilaks' extremely modest dining room, I had enjoyed some of its takeout items, even if they definitely had to be accepted on their own brusque, mouth-scorching terms.
I'd ordered mutton rolls ($2.50 each), an appetizer that's like an egg roll's distant relative, made with a spiced, onion-y, chopped lamb or goat filling inside a crisp, bread-crumbed wrapper. I liked the toothsome mutton rolls from Thilaks as much or even more than the mutton rolls I had last year at Ceylonta in Centretown. That's saying something, as Ceylonta, with its widely admired food and hospitality, strikes me as a great ambassador for Sri Lankan cuisine.
From Thilaks, I also ordered a heaping portion of black pork kotthu roti ($18), an intensely flavoured mish-mash of highly seasoned, if somewhat dry, chunks of pork, chopped flatbread, onions, carrots, cabbage, garlic, ginger, green chili peppers and enough spices to make my scalp steadily sweat.
When I visited Thilaks with my friend, we ordered more mutton rolls, noodles with seafood ($18) and black pork curry with rice and sides ($18).
It was significantly punchier than the kotthu roti at Ceylonta, which may be explained by Ceylonta being Tamil-run while Thilaks' chef and owner are Sinhalese Sri Lankan expats. But the dish from Thilaks so won me over with its heady spiciness and textural contrasts that I was determined to finish all three pounds of it, over several meals, even if the assault of flavours made me repeatedly pause for water breaks.
The mutton rolls did not let us down. The noodles were both curried and distinctly salty and peppery, and the dish's pieces of squid were better than the shrimp, which were tough. The serving of black pork curry was small but packed with flavour. Happily, it came with intriguing side dishes, including a dal-like lentil curry, a lotus root curry and even a curry made with pellets of soy. However, the heaping serving of rice tasted burnt to me.
Still, my adventurous friend liked the meal and took home the leftovers.
During my most recent visit to Thilaks, I met its chef, Nick Diyagu Baduge, who told me the eatery had opened last summer and brought in ingredients like cinnamon from Sri Lanka. He said he had catered a party for the Sri Lanka High Commission in Ottawa last year.
We met on a Wednesday, which meant that Thilaks was serving lump rice ($20), a multi-curry feast with origins that go back to the 1700s, when Sri Lanka was under Dutch rule. That's not to say that lump rice is all that Dutch, although what Thilaks serves does include two frikandellen, which are snacky Dutch meatballs.
The lump rice also included a curry of peas and cashews, a vegetarian curry of ash plantain and eggplant, the meat curry of our choice, an intoxicatingly funky and hot condiment of grated coconut and dried shrimp, two boiled and then deep-fried eggs, and a gigantic heap of yellow rice ('ghee rice,' Baduge said), all wrapped in a banana leaf and then baked.
Baduge said that his lump rice, which smacked me with a parade of robust flavours, was so popular that he can make as many as 100 servings for delivery to Montreal-based Sri Lankan expats. I'm inclined to think that scores of Sri Lankan expats ordering food from almost 200 kilometres away can't be wrong.
Baduge also made a massive plate of deviled chicken ($16), which consisted of bone-in pieces that required some determined knifework or gnawing, plus big chunks of leeks, onions and peppers, all bathed in a sweet, sour and hot sauce. Baduge described the dish as something Sri Lankans might snack on with beer.
Indeed, it occurred to my friend when we ate at Thilaks that she would have liked a beer to go with her food. Thilaks, however, is not licensed. All the more reason, in addition to the windowless-ness and harsh fluorescent lights of Thilaks' spartan dining room, to order its food for takeout, she added.
When I asked Baduge if Thilaks' owner would consider moving to another location, his answer was: 'Yes, of course. We really want to.' Until then, ordering takeout is my recommendation.
Even then, the food at Thilaks, not to mention its ambience or lack thereof, will be too much for readers who prefer to experience spicy food vicariously.
But if you're attracted to bold, rugged flavours and culinary adventure, this surprising, no-frills restaurant is worth considering.
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