Anthony Bourdain once said, “Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma.”
Hotel MaRadha Colombo together with their team and contributors from the Jaffna, intend to portray precisely that with ‘Jaffna Food Festival 2026’, a four-evening feast that will take place from Thursday, 14th of May 2026 to Sunday, 17th of May 2026, at Hotel MaRadha Colombo.
The festival begins after 7:00 PM each evening and will include collaborative efforts by Jaffna’s native chefs to bring the bold, fiery, unapologetic flavours of Sri Lanka’s northern peninsula to Colombo. The festival celebrates generations of Tamil cooking carved out by Jaffna’s dry climate and salt-laced coastline. It is one of South Asia’s most distinctive cuisines.
Hotel MaRadha Colombo hopes to contribute towards keeping the conversation around Jaffna’s distinctive culinary identity going, in collaboration with chefs, performers and artisans from the north.
The hotel will be teeming with people from different stages of life, from kids to their grandparents, eager to find a glimpse of the north in the heart of the capital. The festival is set to deliver just that, in full force! Guests will join in with tasting beloved classics carried down through the Tamil tradition: an official reiteration of “Jaffna Kool” (the thick, smoky-rich seafood broth darkened with odiyal flour ground from palmyra and brimming with prawns, crab, fish and vegetables) as well as “Jaffna Sweets” (the round, golden, jaggery-and-coconut treats that grandmothers across the peninsula have served at every celebration worth remembering).
The setting around will portray an array of cultural elements to set the mood for each evening, from traditional Jaffna decor and the cultural dress worn by staff and performers holding proof of the heritage of the peninsula to fresh fish hauled in from the northern coastline around the current festival days. Guests will also enjoy a Jaffna Toddy Experience tapped straight from palmyra trees and a dedicated Palmyra Fruit Shop offering nongu, the cooling, milk-white palmyra fruit that has been a staple of Jaffna life for as long as anyone can remember.
The festival is open only from the 14th to the 17th of May 2026, after 7:00 PM each evening. If you are keen and able to, do come forward in supporting this valiant effort to keep Jaffna’s culinary legacy alive; a taste of the north this honest doesn’t travel south often.
To make a reservation, contact Hotel MaRadha Colombo on (+94) 70 654 3223 Point your camera at this to visit our event page, or make your reservation directly!
