Bedspace Kitchen is a 10-month-old restaurant tucked snugly down a shifty alley between Welle Dewalaya Road and Matara Road in Unawatuna. Out of the small space comes a big vision to revolutionize what Sri Lanka does with the regular stuff in a homemaker’s kitchen.

“Sri Lanka has amazing produce, and the potential for more inspiring food,” one of the two proprietors, Malcolm Skinner lays it down. “We have great rice and curry, and it’s fantastic, but it’s just one dish.”

Skinner is one half of the two-man team behind Bedspace Kitchen. Leaving his finance career in London behind, he decided to travel and use his passion for cooking to fund his travel. Along the way, in New Zealand, he met David Thomson who had given up his agricultural contracting business in Australia for a way-side cart and the love of food. In December 2011, Skinner was brought to his mother’s homeland, Sri Lanka, to do what he had been doing while in London – helping restaurants and supermarket food-chains figure out the process of growing from businesses of one to many hundreds.

[pullquote]“Sri Lanka has amazing produce, and the potential for more inspiring food,” Malcolm Skinner[/pullquote]

While consulting in Unawatuna, Skinner “recognized the gap”. “The food is fantastic, the produce is fantastic, but there is no skill.” So he called Thomson and convinced him to move to Sri Lanka in June 2012. They worked together as consultants for a while and brainstormed business prospects at the same time.

“Restaurants take a lot of work, and we both knew that,” Thomson says, “so we knew we were not opening a restaurant.”

What they did instead was buy up a guesthouse and host fancy dinner parties two or three times a week, exclusively for those who stayed overnight. Menus at these parties were intentionally built around locally available produce. Far from limiting Bedspace, the focus made them unique, and the parties started becoming a hit with travelers to Una.

But as with a lot of great parties, things got out of hand. Guests from other hotels started joining their dinners, and parties of 10-12 people quickly grew to 20 and more. After a while, Skinner and Thomson figured they should probably open up a smallish shop front, a chilled-out café serving comfort food for breakfast and lunch, which materialized as Bedspace Kitchen in mid-late 2015. Their reputation for dinner parties kept bringing in guests expecting up-market items for an evening meal. A fully fledged restaurant with a revamped menu of popular items from their party menus took off just four months ago. They still do the dinner parties, but only in the “high” tourist season and when they can get the produce they need.

Local sourcing remains the “core” of Bedspace’s philosophy. Skinner believes Sri Lanka has the potential to advance its value proposition to foreign customers if we get better at food – simply doing different things with the same old ingredients in your average kitchen. This is where Thomson’s classical training in culinary arts changes the game.

The restaurant seems to serve up what looks like a familiar selection of international dishes, but really, it doesn’t. Their burger buns are actually yeast-infused rottis and their hummus is made of jack seeds. If you like Japanese, they’ll give you Sushi Negeri, but with heirloom Sri Lankan rice instead of the typical sticky, and local pickles instead of Japanese. Their favorite pie is not key lime, but coconut treacle stuffed with the tender flesh of young king coconut. And they keep no secrets.

If you want their recipes, they will be happy to share them. Far from being protective of their current advantage over local businesses that serve up only what you’re familiar with, the pair are interested in feeding a food revolution in Sri Lanka.

Skinner and Thomson employ local youth in their kitchen and are training them to be the best in the island at what they do. “Most of the time, I won’t be in the kitchen anymore,” Thomson says. He is confident that some of their senior staff will soon have the skills needed to walk into any five-star hotel and land jobs.

The fact remains that their “current” advantage is only that. Bedspace has gone through multiple transformations since they first incorporated in 2013, and they continue developing the existing business, while foraying into consulting, property management and other prospects.

Evolution is their mantra – for business and food.