What is a Hopper? Sri Lanka's Most Iconic Dish Explained
A hopper is a bowl-shaped crepe made from fermented rice batter and coconut milk. Crispy and lacy around the edges, soft in the middle. Unlike anything else you've eaten.
If you've eaten at a Sri Lankan restaurant, you've probably seen hoppers. If you haven't, here's what you're missing.
A hopper (called appam in Tamil) is a bowl-shaped crepe made from fermented rice batter and coconut milk. It's cooked in a small, rounded iron pan that gives it its distinctive shape, crispy and lacy around the edges, soft and slightly chewy in the middle.
What do they taste like?
The fermented batter gives hoppers a subtle sourness, similar to a sourdough. The coconut milk adds richness that balances it. The texture is what surprises people most. The contrast between the crispy edges and the soft centre is genuinely unlike anything else.
Plain hoppers are eaten with sambals and curries. You tear pieces off and use them to scoop. Egg hoppers have an egg cracked into the centre as it cooks, so you get a soft set yolk sitting in the bowl.
Where do they come from?
Hoppers are eaten across Sri Lanka and South India, but Jaffna, the northern Sri Lankan city our food is rooted in, has its own version. The Jaffna hopper is thinner, crispier, made with a slightly different batter. It's the version we make.
Why do hoppers work so well at events?
We run live hopper stations at events and they're consistently one of the most talked-about things we do. They're made individually, to order, right in front of your guests. Watching a hopper cook, the batter setting into that perfect lacy pattern, the edges crisping up, the egg settling in the centre, is genuinely satisfying to watch.
They're also relatively light, which means guests can have two or three without feeling heavy. And they look beautiful. There's a reason hoppers photograph well. The shape and the lace pattern are distinctive in a way that a curry or rice dish isn't.
Are hoppers suitable for dietary requirements?
Plain hoppers are naturally vegan and gluten-free. Egg hoppers are vegetarian. We serve them with a selection of sambals and chutneys and always have options for different dietary requirements.