Overview
Before she'd even learnt to cook, O Tama Carey knew she wanted to open a Sri Lankan diner in Sydney. But much like the fiery afterglow of a black curry or the satisfying fermented tang of a hopper lingering on the tongue, this passion for the flavours and culture of her mother's homeland took time to bloom.
Born to a Burgher family that emigrated to Australia in the 70s, Sri Lankan food was a rarity in Carey's Adelaide home growing up, reserved for special occasions or dinner parties. It wasn't until she made her first journey to Sri Lanka when she was 19 that Carey began to hear her future as a chef calling. "I had six weeks there and it was just incredible — everything I tasted just blew my mind. I remember my mum being really shocked by how much I ate because I was never much of an eater at home. We had really good cooks in my family, but I was totally uninterested in food as a kid," Carey admits as she takes a short break from the kitchen during a busy evening service.
O Tama Carey, image: Nikki To
This formative holiday was followed by a stint in London where Carey began working in hospitality in earnest, but it would take years of dabbling with recipes passed on to her from her grandmother in Perth and multiple research trips to the South Asian island before her dream of championing Sri Lankan food in Sydney could finally take shape. By the time Carey began testing, via a series of pop-ups and markets, the viability of opening a bricks-and-mortar Sri Lankan restaurant, she had already cemented an impressive reputation within Sydney's dining scene, thanks to five years working under Kylie Kwong at Billy Kwong, followed by her first head chef position at the once-legendary Italian eatery Berta, which closed its doors in 2018.
Later that same year, Lankan Filling Station welcomed its first guests to a sleek and slender premises on Darlinghurst's Riley Street. With its polished concrete floors, unconventional layout and industrial-chic, minimalist aesthetic, the restaurant's look and feel already stood it apart from the small clutch of Sri Lankan eateries in Sydney at the time. As did the menu, which married an elevated bar offering (think playful signature cocktails and an impressive wine list including low-intervention bottles) with classic Sri Lankan fare showcasing punchy flavours, vibrant colours and polished executions.
Image: Parker Blain
For seven years, hoppers – the traditional bowl-shaped pancakes made from a fermented batter of coconut and rice flour with a crisp yet lacy edge and a dense, spongy bottom — were the headliners at Lankan Filling Station, served alongside a kaleidoscopic array of colourful sambols — spicy Sri Lankan chutneys. You'll still find hoppers on offer today, but only on Fridays and Saturdays. The rest of the week, Carey is exploring new culinary territory, serving up riffs on Sri Lankan classics featuring native Australian ingredients.
"When we first opened, the most important thing for me was to showcase classic Sri Lankan cuisine. I feel that we've achieved that — and now we get to play," Carey says of this change in direction. "We're still doing Sri Lankan flavours, but in terms of technique and the way we're cooking things, we're leaning into more modern platings. You know, my training has been all over the place, so I feel like I have the freedom now to draw on that, bring in new ideas and new elements, and see where it takes us."
The curated banquet—reasonably priced at $85 per head—is the best way to experience the restaurant's latest era. It starts with an acharu plate of pickled carrot, fennel and fermented snake beans, a scene-setting appetiser that blasts the palate awake with an air horn of sweet, spicy, puckeringly sharp flavour.
Next a varai (a traditional Sri Lankan prawn sambol) is reimagined as a carefully balanced canape of delicate, creamy roasted crab meat spiked with turmeric and a thrill of dry chilli, scooped up in a betel leaf. As well as the introduction of native ingredients, Carey's new menu also reaches beyond Sir Lanka's borders by drawing inspiration from a broader, pan-Asian spectrum of textures and techniques. For example, there's a morish plate of crisp, golden jackfruit cutlets served san choy bow-style in a refreshing lettuce leaf with fresh herbs and a sweet chilli dipping sauce similar to a Vietnamese nuoc cham.
Nikki To
Some of Lankan Filling Station's greatest hits remain on the menu, notably the hot butter cuttlefish, and it's easy to see why this dish has been such a firm favourite for so many years. A tried and true crowd pleaser, it marries a wallop of heat with a more nuanced interplay of textures, as the satisfying salty crunch of a flash-fried in a rice flour batter shell gives way to the perfectly pliant, slightly sweet cuttlefish flesh beneath.
Spice is a thread that ties together all the savoury dishes at Lankan Filling Station, but even the hottest plates on the menu avoid overwhelming their nuance with tortuous levels of chilli. Carey's control of heat is masterful, taking diners on a magic carpet ride as the levels of spiciness climb and dip, swooping from firey heights to mellowed-out lows with each passing dish.
Nikki To
Take the kangaroo tail black curry for example, which perks up the senses with the sour zing of tamarind and a sweet palm-sugar edge before a big kick of intense pepperiness comes to the fore. Crowned with a garland of curry leaves, the bone-in 'roo — a criminally underrated cut — melts with a surprising richness that you simply don't find in the more ubiquitous fillets and steaks. Pro tip: also order the house-baked kade paan, served toasted and spread with an extraordinary curry leaf butter — it's perfect for sopping up the remaining dark umber slick of black curry sauce left in the bowl.
Perhaps the most remarkable quality of Carey's food is the way she deftly plays with flavour — no dish is ever just sweet, just salty, just bitter. Even the desserts — a trio of delightful bites including Carey's grandmother's recipe for milk toffee and a crumbly yet moist love cake — playfully hopscotch between flavour profiles, lighting up the tongue as each chew releases another wave of complexity. This is a menu you could eat a hundred times and still find new depths and intricacies to each mouthful.
Parker Blain
Top image: Nikki To
