A devil’s face with goggle eyes and swollen tongue stares from the window of Kottu House. It’s only a vinyl decal, meant to evoke the wooden masks — often flanked by cobras, peacocks or flames — that guard the entrances of Sinhalese homes in Sri Lanka, warding off evil.

Inside, the same face is projected above the bar in random glow-stick colors, to the low pulse of trance music.

Apart from a Buddha statue in a corner, Kottu House doesn’t abide by the usual tropes of New York City’s Sri Lankan restaurants, many of which are clustered in Tompkinsville, on the northeastern shore of Staten Island. There, they cater primarily to the neighborhood’s population of some 5,000 Sri Lankans. Chelaka Gunamuni, who opened Kottu House in March on the Lower East Side, seeks a wider audience.

He arrived on Staten Island at age 15, after a childhood divided between Panadura, on Sri Lanka’s southwestern coast, and Milan, where his mother and his uncle ran a restaurant. Now 30, he lives a few blocks from Kottu House, which serves as a bridge of sorts, between generations and worlds.