Uber’s 2022 Cravings report reveals Sri Lanka’s love and hate relationship with onions

Uber looked at how people ordered on UberEats last year and discovered Sri Lanka’s love and hate relationship with onions. 

While onion prominently featured among the list of the most ordered grocery items, it was also the most maligned item on the food menu with Sri Lankans asking for the bulb to be removed from their meals most frequently. 

The Uber Eats Cravings Report 2022, a snapshot of the country’s favourite cravings and the most popular binge-worthy dishes, threw up some interesting revelations. 

Apart from ‘no onions’, top special instructions hinted at Sri Lankans’ love for spice over sugar. ‘Make it Spicy’, ‘Extra Spicy’ and add ‘No Sugar’ were the most common requests on orders on UberEats. It also turns out that Sri Lankans remained impeccably polite, as nearly half of all instructions included the word ‘please’. 

Sri Lanka’s long love affair with ‘Short Eats’ continued with Fish Patty, Chicken Puff Pastry and Fish Bun topping the list of most popular items ordered as mid-meal snacks. 

Interestingly, in Sri Lanka that is one of the world’s largest tea exporters, iced coffee trumped milk tea as the most popular beverage. 

The list of most popular dishes confirmed what we all know – Sri Lankans love their rice. 3 out of 5 most ordered dishes, clocking millions of orders, were rice-based. Here’s the list:

nSpicy Chicken Sub

nMixed Fried Rice

nNasi Goreng 

nChicken Biryani

nChicken burger

Grocery orders on the Uber Eats app were along expected lines with focus on vegetables for home-cooked meals and milk for popular beverages. Here’s the list of top 5 grocery items ordered: 

• Tomatoes
• Carrots
• Big onions
• Beans
• Fresh Milk

One Eater ordered a whopping 294 times from the same restaurant in 2022. Another Eater splurged Rs. 62,600 on a single order making it the most expensive order on the app last year.