The other night I went to a Sri Lankan restaurant in London (Paradise – not my review, the name). I have eaten more than my fair share of Sri Lankan food, growing up with a mum who is not only the Thierry Henry of Sri Lankan cooking, but also sees a fat son as the best way of marketing her brand.

Sri Lankan food is nothing like Indian: it is hotter, drier, has a different array of flavours, and distinct staples, like hoppers (a bowl-shaped crispy pancake made from fermented rice flour) and coconut sambol (coconut made physically addictive). It hasn’t been taken to the heart of British culture in the same way Indian food has. Many people seem not to realise that they are different cuisines. One of my first standup routines was about the frustrations of going to an Indian restaurant with white friends and being asked for recommendations about a cuisine I had no more understanding of than they did. (The punchline was: “Why don’t you tell me what you know about tortellini, you prick” – sophisticated stuff.)

I have also eaten at a lot of Sri Lankan restaurants, mainly with my parents. But these have been aimed at Sri Lankans. They are filled with tables that look as if they were stolen from a garden centre, and the vibe is very “school canteen”. You go in, order food from a guy who makes you feel as if you have insulted his family, then a while later you are delivered the most beautifully authentic Sri Lankan cuisine for a measly price. I love these places.

At Paradise, however, I was faced with a new experience. The dishes were all things I have eaten by the bucketload throughout my life, albeit with a contemporary twist, and I felt proud to see them being enjoyed by almost exclusively non-Sri Lankans in a very trendy-looking venue.

It wasn’t all pie-eyed euphoria, though. I have to confess I find the trend of walk-in-only restaurants extremely hostile to the greedier diner. When I eat out, I like to know what time we are going to be sitting down so I can push my hunger to its limit. I can only do this with close friends and family, because me eating when very hungry is one of the great visual atrocities of the modern age.

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If I am with people outside the inner circle, I normally eat before I get there. That way, I am less grabby when the food arrives, and people leave thinking I’m a polite, elegant diner, while in reality I am a greedy bastard who is tucking into his second dinner. When I get to a restaurant and they tell me a table will be ready in 40 minutes, it’s as much as I can do not to lock the door, declare the other diners hostage, and make my first demand the immediate delivery of an aubergine curry. In fairness to Paradise, they said it would be a 20-minute wait, but by then I’d already loaded my gun.

I had to tell my mum about my discovery. I thought she might be excited about the prospect of top-quality Sri Lankan scran being served to the trendies of Soho. Later that day, she popped round to say that she had looked at the menu, and it didn’t look that great. She also warned me that aubergine curry can be quite unhealthy, because of the frying, oblivious to the fact that she makes tankers of it for me. I realised then that I had made a fundamental error. I promised to take her soon, and this time I will remember to tell her that, while the food is nice, it’s not anywhere near as good as she makes it.