Lakruwana

Staten Island's North Shore holds one of the largest Sri Lankan communities outside the island, and the Wijesinghe family's restaurant on Bay Street is its front parlor — a room hung with carved masks, temple paintings and antiques that feels a world away from the ferry ten minutes back. Sri Lankan cooking is built on roasted curry powders, coconut, and an array of curries eaten together with rice.

Order kottu roti, chopped flatbread stir-fried on the griddle with chicken, vegetables and curry until it clatters; hoppers, the bowl-shaped rice-flour crepes, with a yellow fish curry; and lamprais, rice and curries baked together in a banana leaf in the Dutch Burgher style. The weekend buffet has long been the neighborhood's favorite way in — confirm it is running when you go. In 2017 the family opened a small Sri Lankan art and culture museum downstairs.