An introduction

Very few cookbooks appear completely out of the blue, like Rambutan did. It’s not often these days that a publisher will commission a cookbook from someone who doesn’t run a successful restaurant, appear on a TV show, write a popular column or blog, or have a massive social media following. Cynthia Shanmugalingam had none of those things. What she did have was a stack of amazing recipes and a compelling story. For most people, the Rambutan cookbook, published in 2022, was our first glimpse into Cynthia’s world – and what a joy it is to spend time there.

Cynthia grew up in Coventry, the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants. Her mother’s side of the family were, she says, food mad – a whirl of shopping, prep and cooking. “While they’re having lunch, they’re already thinking about dinner,” says Cynthia. It was food that helped her connect with her roots and communicate with her Tamil-speaking relatives on the family’s annual visits to the island.

In 2013, after starting a career as an economist, she founded Kitchenette, the UK’s first food incubator, which sought out people who had good ideas for food businesses but lacked the experience or connections to make them a reality. Helping chefs open their own restaurants planted a seed in Cynthia, who came to the conclusion that she wanted to do the same. After running successful pop-ups at Darjeeling Express and Quo Vadis, she found investors and was looking for premises. Then

Covid hit and the world shut down. Writing Rambutan filled the void.

In it, Cynthia immerses us in her family, in the immigrant experience, in the rich, complex culture of Sri Lanka. Her writing is warm and funny but doesn’t shy away from the harsher realities of life. “It has been a very joyful experience, reconnecting with Sri Lankan people and Sri Lankan food and my memories of it,” she explained last year on the Borough Talks podcast . “It’s full of melancholy as well, and sadness, and raging at Sri Lanka’s maddening injustices. I think that’s just the experience of being Sri Lankan, especially a Sri Lankan Tamil and an immigrant. I hoped that by talking about that stuff it would make the book fun and engaging but also give people a real sense of the island and my relationship to it.”

The recipes take their lead from the regional cooking of the north of the island, while accounting for the availability of ingredients in the UK. They are, says their author, “part Sri Lankan, part London, part Cynthia”. They offer a lovely mix of vegetarian, vegan, meat and fish; of simplicity and complexity; of coconut milk and curry leaves.

After immersing yourself in her recipes, you now have the opportunity to enjoy Cynthia’s cooking. The Rambutan restaurant opened in March on Borough Market’s gorgeous Stoney Street. If it’s even half as good as the book of the same name, you’re in for a treat.