Kaveesha Fernando meets Lahiru Dilshan who is taking kithul to new heights The Only Kithul lounge lives up to its name – there is zero use of sugar or other sweeteners apart from kithul treacle and jaggery in their menu – not in their cakes, coffee and in fact, sugar is banned from the premises! [...]
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The Only Kithul lounge lives up to its name – there is zero use of sugar or other sweeteners apart from kithul treacle and jaggery in their menu – not in their cakes, coffee and in fact, sugar is banned from the premises! Staff are given kithul jaggery to sweeten their tea.
The brainchild of Lahiru Dilshan, the recently opened Only Kithul Lounge is just a small part of his larger goal to get recognition for Sri Lanka’s kithul trade, which is on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Lahiru Dilshan and his cafe. Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
Lahiru grew up in Ratnapura where his family grew kithul trees and so, tasting kithul treacle and jaggery was second nature to him. He realised that there was a gap in the market – good kithul was hard to find so in 2016, a year after leaving school, young Lahiru decided to commit to the kithul industry. He visited trade shows and Expos, learning as he went and by 2018 he was bottling kithul treacle after taking a course on it at the Industrial Development Board.
He then planned to open a factory and despite the unforeseen COVID pandemic, in 2020 he opened part of the factory (sugar is banned there too). In 2021, he developed a kithul butter. By 2024, he had a shop in Kottawa selling not just treacle and jaggery but also foods made of it and faced with repeated requests from customers to open a bigger shop, in 2026, the Only Kithul lounge was launched.
The restaurant apart, there is educational material on the benefits of kithul and also a display of the tools used in the kithul trade for visitors to see but the biggest source of information is Lahiru himself. It’s clear he’s not just focused on sales. Showing us a book he gives farmers, he says that he explains the qualities required to meet their grading criteria (premium, standard etc). He also visits the farmers himself and does inspections.
“We train them and pay them more than the market rate and when they have our book in hand, they realise how much money they can make and become motivated to work harder and produce high quality products,” he says, adding that monthly incomes can amount to Rs. 1 or 2 lakhs.
The kithul is graded at Lahiru’s factory in Ratnapura, and when bottled, each bottle has a batch number so it can be traced to the point of origin. Lahiru doesn’t do bulk orders either – only 10 bottles of kithul or jaggery are sold at a time, for import.
For him quality is everything. “I would rather let the display cases stay empty than sell an inferior product,” he says.
The taste is evident – from the latte with kithul treacle to the special kithul cake, everything has the distinct flavour of kithul in it. They even have falafel that adds kithul flour into the mixture. Most of the dishes have kithul treacle, jaggery or flour in them. The menu is expansive from poke bowls to wraps to curries as well as sweet treats like waffles and cookies, but Lahiru isn’t stopping there.
He plans to organise tours to kithul plantations so that people can meet the farmers and experience the kithul industry firsthand. In the future, he also plans to have his own plantations.
We should learn to value and appreciate kithul more, he feels. “People love adding maple syrup to pancakes but they should try adding kithul – the rich flavour is incomparable, he says.”
The Only Kithul Lounge is at Fife Road, Colombo 5.
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Print Edition – The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka
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