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- Shaheen Ghazaly opened Sri Lankan restaurant Kurrypinch in a former vegan pizzeria on Hollywood Boulevard this spring.
- On the menu are Sri Lankan signatures — like kottu roti and string hoppers — along with Ghazaly’s boundary-pushing dishes.
- Get the recipes for Kurrypinch’s coconut roti and chickpea curry.
There’s no shortage of delicious things to eat in East Hollywood: herbaceous lamb kebabs at Saffy’s; garlicky prawns at Kuya Lord; the entire spicy-sweet-salty pantheon of Thai Town. But until recently, there was nowhere to try kottu roti, lamprais or string hoppers. That is, until Kurrypinch came along.
Located in the former home of a vegan pizza joint on Hollywood Boulevard, Kurrypinch is one of just a handful of Sri Lankan restaurants scattered across the Southland and the only one in Central L.A. (Most of the others are in the Valley, and there’s an outlier in Westwood.) Chef-owner Shaheen Ghazaly has big plans to introduce the cuisine — and his own personalized take on it — to as many Angelenos as possible.
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But first, he’s trying to define his version of the rich, spicy Sri Lankan food that bears some resemblance to its South Indian neighbors but is very much its own thing. “I’m still trying to figure that out myself,” he says. Ghazaly walks me through the vast lineup of herbs and spices in his open kitchen: finely chopped ginger and garlic, mustard seeds (“Those three ingredients go into basically every dish,” he notes), chile flakes, paprika, turmeric, fried curry leaves, two different types of his own custom curry powders.
There are tubs of brick-hued chile sauce and garlic oil, both made in-house, and a sheet tray overflowing with burnished tangles of fried onions, awaiting their role as garnish. Coconut is everywhere too, in fresh, shredded and milk form; Ghazaly uses it as the base for many of his curries. (Rice and curry, he explains, is a staple of Sri Lankan cuisine: “Without it, we are nothing,” he says solemnly.)
Hoppers and rotis on the griddle
An entire subgenre of “deviled” dishes is heavily spiced with chile and garlic, and fried snacks like fish fritters and spiced chickpeas make great drinking food. And, of course, hoppers (rice flour pancakes), string hoppers (rice noodles) and rotis underpin many meals — the latter two Ghazaly cooks on the griddle, spatulas clanging in a rhythmic blur.
Ghazaly makes his own curry blends and chile oil; eschews the use of soy sauce, black pepper and MSG; and doesn’t use any dairy as a thickener. All of his produce is fresh, including curry leaves gifted from a customer’s tree. “This is how I grew up cooking,” he says.
With a majority Sinhalese population that’s mostly Buddhist, a smaller Tamil contingent who are primarily Hindu and a smattering of Muslims and Christians too, it’s impossible to neatly define the cuisine of the island nation — which also bears the influence of Dutch, Portuguese and British colonialists. But if there’s a through line, it’s that most Sri Lankan food is boldly, brightly flavored with a riot of contrasting tastes and textures that makes it nothing short of thrilling to eat.
The L.A. metropolitan area has the second-largest Sri Lankan population in the country (behind New York) with an estimated 7,000 people, many concentrated in the San Fernando Valley near Reseda and Tarzana.
In 1952, the Immigration and Nationality Act repealed certain measures aimed at excluding Asian immigrants, and the following year the first Sri Lankan immigrant to the U.S. under said act, 19-year-old Rajah Rutnam, arrived in L.A.
Rutnam’s brother, Jayam, the co-founder of the Sri Lanka America Assn. of Southern California says that chain migration and later a lottery system encouraged more Sri Lankans — often fluent in English due to the British schooling system — to arrive in subsequent decades.
The first Sri Lankan restaurant in California
“In the ’60s, ours was one of the few families here, and the only reason we came was to visit my brother,” Rutnam says. “But we got here and we immediately liked everything about California.” It’s worth noting that Rajah Rutnam, who died in 2010, founded the first Sri Lankan restaurant in California, dubbed Rajah’s Elephant Walk, in Hollywood.
Ghazaly, 49, took a slightly different path. Born in Karachi, Pakistan, he moved to Sri Lanka at 8. As a child, Ghazaly took an active interest in the kitchen, and his single father encouraged his son to become familiar with different spices and ingredients. “I’ve had this talent since I was very young where I can taste something, recognize its ingredients and mimic it,” he says. As a young adult, he joined his father’s merchant shipping line and spent a dozen years crisscrossing the globe on cargo carriers, docking across Asia, Africa and Europe, exploring the local cuisines in each port.
Ghazaly adds chickpeas to his curry in the Kurrypinch kitchen. Then, a creamy drizzle of coconut milk.
He moved to Los Angeles in 2006 to pursue a career in IT, while spending his off-hours cooking elaborate Sri Lankan dishes to woo the family of his now-wife, a childhood friend who had immigrated a few years before. Friends and family who tasted Ghazaly’s home cooking encouraged him to go pro, and in 2018, he opened a small storefront in Van Nuys, doing a brisk takeout business.
Sri Lankans from across Los Angeles county sought him out, and in 2022, he moved his operation, dubbed Kurrypinch, to a larger location in Tarzana, just down the street from longstanding Sri Lankan destination Apey Kade.
With COVID-19’s impact on businesses and a landlord considering demolishing the building, Ghazaly closed the Tarzana location in February of last year. He considered taking a break from restaurants entirely, but when one of his former customers, Dr. Nimesh Rajakumar, offered to invest in a space in East Hollywood, Ghazaly knew it was an opportunity too good to pass up.
“I didn’t want to call it ‘authentic’”
The new Kurrypinch, designed by Jennifer Nielsen, trades the strip-mall coziness of some other Sri Lankan spots in exchange for a more modern, streamlined aesthetic, with cool concrete floors and rustic flourishes throughout. There are 26 seats, including a six-seat chef’s counter with a partial view of the kitchen, where Ghazaly holds court, experimenting with new dishes for the most adventurous diners.
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The menu is a mixture of more traditional “Sri Lankan Signatures” — like kottu roti (chopped roti stir-fried with an aromatic blend of eggs, meat and vegetables) or string hopper (served in pilau form with curry leaves and spices) — and the “Chef’s Signatures,” where Ghazaly’s creativity shines, with what he describes as riffs inspired by global dishes — a coconut milk risotto with mahi-mahi inspired by shrimp and grits, or seared salmon atop a creamy curried kabocha squash puree.
Ghazaly is attempting to strike a balance between satisfying the Sri Lankan customers who come in seeking the highly spiced flavors they grew up with, and the majority non-Sri Lankan guests who may be trying the cuisine for the first time. “That’s one of the reasons I didn’t want to call it an ‘authentic’ Sri Lankan restaurant, because everything has a different kind of spice blend and a different way of cooking,” he explains. So far, however, feedback from all parties has been positive (even if the Sri Lankans sometimes ask for extra chiles or more gravy on the side).
Kurrypinch opened at the end of February and is still fine-tuning operations. Ghazaly is currently focused on getting the restaurant open for lunch service and outdoor dining, and expanding his wine list with specific pairing options. It’s all part of his overarching goal to introduce people to the complexities of his cuisine.
“Whenever people ask me, ‘Hey, is Sri Lankan food like Indian food? Is it like Chinese food?’ I say, sure, we’re similar — but Sri Lankan is better,” he says, laughing.
Get the recipes
Kurrypinch's Griddled Coconut Roti
Kurrypinch's Coconut Chickpea Curry
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