Lanka Cooks With A Whole Lot of Heart at Loku Northcote

Loku is the restaurant of Lanka Imiyaarachchige, mother of two, full-time worker, and night-time kitchen warrior. Most evenings she slips out of her day job and into her apron, stirring pots, tasting spice mixes, arranging curries. She sources fresh produce from the market. She makes many elements from the ground up.

What you taste at Loku is food that sings. Sometimes you have to pick out a clove or piece of cardamom, that teasing of spice is part of the fun.

Loku means “elder” in Sinhalese. It’s the name her family gave Lanka, their eldest child. As a girl of nine, she was already helping with meals, learning by watching her mother, taking on tasks both small and large in the kitchen. Cooking became her way of loving her people, of taking responsibility, of playing caretaker through food.

Years later, having moved to Australia in the 1990s, Lanka carried those lessons with her. Opening LOKU gave her a chance to bring her home’s tastes to Melbourne: roasts and curries, fragrant powders, comforting sauces.

LOKU’s kitchen offers dishes that range from soft, simple starters through bold curries to sweet, cooling desserts. Here are a few highlights:

• Roast paan with turmeric butter, coconut sambal and shallots. Crunch outside, soft inside.
• Fish roll with tomato chutney. Light, warm, spicy.
• Eggplant and fish curry that hits you with layers, fish, fire, richness.

Then there are the mains. Curries for two, like chicken, pork or fish, all using Lanka’s roasted powder, coconut milk, turmeric, curry leaves. Underneath the heat there’s technique: slow cooking, balancing acidity, layering flavours so each curry tastes distinct.

Vegetarian or vegan? Plenty to explore. Beetroot curry, kale mallum, jackfruit slow-cooked in coconut milk. Each dish made with intention.

Lanka offers an experience that isn’t glossy but feels lived in. You eat what she grew up eating, what her mother made, what she believes in. There’s comfort in that. Nostalgia. New memories.

People who’ve tried Loku speak of nostalgia, of food that tastes like home food but polished, of starters arriving quick, mains slow in the best way, worth the wait. The roast paan, especially, keeps getting praise. So do the variety of curries - each totally different, each powerful. LOKU isn’t huge. It isn’t fancy in the sense of crystal glasses or marble floors. It doesn’t need to be. Its power is in flavour. In stories. In seeing Lanka at work, cooking with heart.

In Melbourne’s sea of modern restaurants chasing trends, Loku stands steady by tradition. It shows that authenticity doesn’t mean static. Food shifts: spices tweak, plating improves, menus stretch. Yet the core stays. Family, home, flavour, technique.

For the people of Northcote who want spice, who want heat, who want comfort in a bowl - the kind that reaches back to childhood and also presses forward, Loku delivers. And for Lanka, this is more than cooking. It’s her dream made real.