Ever since going to Sri Lanka, and learning about how they cook their delicious sambols and curries at the Euphoria Spice Garden in Matale, I’ve been wondering where I might be able to buy fresh curry leaves and other ingredients in London. I’ve recently been wanting to have a go at some of the recipes I learned over there and so I did a bit of searching online to see where I might be able to find those hard-to-come-by ingredients.

The Indian Spice Shop on Drummond Street was pretty much the first result I came across and had plenty of good reviews. One of the reviews said that they sell fresh curry leaves so that clinched it for me and I decided to pay them a visit after work.

You can find lots of fresh herbs and vegetables outside the store. I was really excited to find Indian onions like the ones we used in Sri Lanka. They’re smaller than our regular onions and slightly purple in colour a bit like a shallot. I bought them to make some seeni sambol which is a sweet onion chutney-like condiment. That recipe will be coming soon!

I got there just in time to get the very last bag of fresh curry leaves so I was really relieved having made a special trip. It was a decent sized bag too (the photo only shows a handful) so I’ve popped some in the freezer so they’ll keep longer.

The shop has two entrances from the street. I went in the first one and was immediately met with rows upon rows of all imaginable spices. They sell pretty much every Indian/South Asian ingredient that you could possibly need from spices to pulses to naans and parathas. There are lots of hidden nooks and crannies so I made sure to have a look in around all of them to see what hidden gems were waiting!

I used the opportunity to stock up on a few dried herbs and spices and bought some green cardamoms, bay leaves, cassia cinnamon, and some crushed chilli flakes. They also have a range of tamarind products so I got some tamarind paste too. All of my purchases (adding in a sneaky pack of Bombay mix for the journey home) came to under £8!

I am going to see whether I can find a similar store closer to home, perhaps in Tooting, but for now I’m so excited to have found somewhere I can get all of the things I need to cook Sri Lankan food and for such an amazing price. I can’t wait to start sharing some of the recipes with you too!