Recognising Jaffna: A culinary adventure by popular YouTubers ‘Chopstick Travel’

Under Sri Lanka Tourism’s Travel Blogger & Influencer Program, Luke Martin and Sabrina Davidson of ‘Chopstick Travel’ – the popular food travel based YouTube channel – visited Sri Lanka recently to explore Sri Lanka’s culinary diversity filled with rich flavours.

Chopstick Travel is one of the growing international culinary travel channels on You Tube and boasts over 93 million global views and over 500,000 subscribers.

Sri Lanka Tourism has designed this program together with Chopstick Travel with a focus to promote Jaffna as a popular seafood heaven for growing international foodie travellers. Travelling in association with the Visiting Blogger Program of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, the dynamic pair of successful YouTubers recently dove straight into Jaffna’s culinary and cultural scene. 

They came seeking to document the most authentic and traditional cuisine of Sri Lanka, in order to share their experiences with their large audience, and had the opportunity to do so in the northern city of Jaffna. 

“Our goal is to help put Sri Lanka back on track to becoming a top travel destination. In my opinion, Jaffna is set to become a travel hotspot in the near future. We’re so excited to be able to let the world know about this fascinating city,” Luke shared.

The YouTubers were able to experience the taste of some local toddy, identical to Jaffna, made out of the sap of the palmyrah tree’s flower. “I’m so impressed by the bravery of the toddy tappers, collecting this delicious drink daily. After tasting the toddy, I fully understand why it’s such a popular drink locally. What a special experience,” Sabrina said after tasting the local drink. “We’re excited to share this traditional practice with the world!”

Afterwards Luke and Sabrina visited a local fish market, where the fish were coming off the boats and being brought directly to the market. This also was a first time experience for them of the culinary adventures they had so far. 

Then they visited a local home, where they were going to prepare Jaffna style spicy curry and kool, a seafood dish prepared only in Jaffna. Hours of preparation by the family went into creating this fascinating and Jaffna-exclusive cuisine, a process in which will be featured on Chopstick Travel. 

“It’s incredible how the seven types of seafood in this dish came together with the skilful preparation of the family. It clearly was made with love,” Luke said upon finishing the meal.

When asked about their culinary adventure in Jaffna, they concluded, “We found the food of Jaffna to be rich and flavourful, but with a different character than we found in Colombo. It was a bit spicier, which we really enjoyed, and it clearly has a different influence coming from Tamil cuisine. The food of Jaffna should not be missed by any traveller, domestic or international. ‘’

Chopstick Travel will be featuring the unique preparations, fascinating processes, and their reactions to these dishes and practices in the Jaffna episode of their upcoming five-part Sri Lankan series.  

Governor for Jaffna Suren Raghavan gave his valuable support to Sri Lanka Tourism, in their journey of exploring Jaffna cuisine.