Words: Tina Edward Gunawardhana
Sri Lankan cuisine is enjoying unprecedented attention in the UK thanks to the efforts of chefs like Chanaka Fernando who has helped put Sri Lankan cuisine on the map.
A Chef who trained under the likes of master chef Gordon Ramsey, Chanaka has now opened his own restaurant with two other chefs Vincenzo Restivo and Virglio Mendi in Banbury in Oxfordshire. The restaurant named 3 Flavours brings the flavours of multiple cultures under one roof.
While feasting over a Sunday lunch at 3 Flavours, Chanaka reveals that he was only 13 years old when he started working in the family run catering business in the seaside town of Negombo. His tasks were more mundane back then. Helping with the shopping, peeling and chopping vegetables and meat and washing the utensils high on the agenda. He claims it was his mum who was the cook in the family. “ She took the lead while we just followed her. She was blessed with a good hand. She would just stand over the big pots of curry and she would know just the right amount of spices to add. No following recipes for her, she just knew it."
It was a no brainer that he too followed the family trade of catering and after leaving the local school he enrolled himself at the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management, after which in 2000 he proceeded to London where he obtained his professional qualifications from the Hackney College of Asian and Oriental Cooking. He then worked his way up the Chef ladder by working under esteemed Chefs such as Gordon Ramsey, Marcus Wareing, Mark Hix, Allan Williams, Lee Streeton and Sujan Sarkar.
The education and training he learnt while working under the aforementioned Chefs was priceless. “It was a baptism of fire” he says working in the kitchens of these stars of the culinary world. Chanaka specalises in fusion cooking and is a dab hand at creating international cuisine especially European, oriental and Asian.
If he had not been able to follow his dreams and become a Chef he would have liked to have become a professional cricketer he says, while his one lament is that he wishes he learnt better English in the village school he attended in Negombo. “English is such an integral part of one’s education”.
