You hear La Mana before you see it. A low bass line carrying down the road, voices layering on top of each other in that particular register that only happens when a lot of people are having a genuinely good time, tuktuk's beeping like some sort of chaotic song . Then you round the corner and find the queue — a proper one, stretching well past the neighbouring shopfronts, all the way back toward the petrol station. Thursday or Sunday, it doesn't matter which. This is simply w

There's a particular kind of gossip that travels fast in a small town, and lately, all of it has been about food. Someone mentions a fire kitchen with an ocean view. Someone else swears the teapot at a new spot isn't pouring tea at all. A friend comes back from a burger place raving in a way that seems disproportionate to a burger, until you try it and understand. For a stretch of coast that spent years running on the same short list of dependable spots, something has shifte

I met Jim at Uncle's, Ahangama, sitting next to us at the bar, working through a chocolate coconut pot that the kitchen does, an evening favourite of mine in Ahangama. I hadn't ordered one myself, but I couldn't stop looking at it, and eventually I said something like: how good is that, I'm obsessed with these, they remind me of the Gü pots I used to eat growing up in the UK. One a day for I don't know how long. An addiction, really, disguised as a dessert. Jim smiled in