Yaal Tiffins - South Indian/Sri Lankan - Houston

Okay, I said I’d post about this so here is a link to my original blog post from two years ago.

Keep in mind this was my first experience of Sri Lankan cuisine. I loved the experience of the Saturday traditional feast.

My original post drew lots of attention and I wanted to do a follow up quickly on the other special Sri Lankan meal offered on Thursday evenings. I went in feeling unwell and left before the meal was over and never got around to posting about it. I have not been able to find any notes about the food but did find the pictures I took, so I will post those here.

Unfortunately neither the flyer (on the blog post) nor my label for this picture are much help - Dinner Apps.

More Sri Lankan omelet, puttu and podi sambol.

Idiyappam, also known as String Hopper, Sothi, Sambol. I believe these were the only string hoppers being served anywhere in Houston at that time. It’s steamed rice flour noodles. Sothi is identified by the interwebs as a mild coconut milk curry. I think I was supposed to pour the Sothi over the hopper but don’t remember if I did.

This is the dish I remember best from that evening and I loved it - Coconut Roti. Roti is a flatbread of course so this is a bread salad. Recipes on the web do indicate Coconut Roti is made with coconut folded into the batter/dough for the roti (and also chilies but I don’t remember there being any heat).

It was at this point that I felt I had to get up and leave, lest I have an eruption in the restaurant. I think the dessert was the only course I skipped out on and, alas, I’ve never gotten back over there. I was rather embarrassed by having to urgently request the check and dash out the door.

From what I can tell from Yelp reviews and the Facebook page there have been a lot of changes. It does seem the traditional feast is still served mid-day Saturday but is being referred to as a ‘sit down buffet.’

I highly recommend experiencing that.

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I had every intention in the world of hitting Yaal last Saturday for that lunch. But it was raining off and on and I kept putting it off and never got out.

Soon.

Very very soon.

This place is so close to me but I’ve never seen it, will definitely try it on a Saturday. I usually head to the Mahatma Ghandi district for Indian on a Saturday.