Starter Kit. Idea 480 of 500. Cluster 26
Jaffna: a culinary capital, the crab and the palmyrah sold as a cuisine
The mechanism, from the book
Every city has one thing it could be known for, and each is currently known for nothing in particular.
The first step
Cook 4 dishes, the crab curry, a palmyrah sweet and two others from a Jaffna home kitchen, and serve them as a set tasting menu to 12 paying guests at a supper in a house or guesthouse. Photograph every plate and note what each guest would pay next time. Then send the menu and the photographs to 2 Colombo restaurants and ask whether they would host it as a guest night.
- Who pays first
- A visitor to Jaffna, or a Colombo diner, who has heard of the crab and wants to eat it as a proper menu rather than a roadside dish.
- What leaves today
- The crab and the palmyrah are sold as ingredients, not as a cuisine with a name, so the premium a named cuisine commands is never earned.
Ask first
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what a home kitchen must meet to serve paying guests.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether a food tour or supper club can be listed for visitors.
Check before you spend
Confirm that the kitchen meets health rules for paying guests, food is handled safely, and the house may be used for paid suppers.
Find out these three numbers
- What would a visitor pay for a set tasting menu?
- What do the ingredients for one supper cost?
- How many guests a week could one kitchen serve?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"every kitchen on the island side by side, as one national inheritance"
Jaffna's food deserves its own name on that table. Serve it as a cuisine, not a meal.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.