When Samantha Fore told me she would pick me up in a silver Honda, I thought I knew what to expect: a comfortable four-door sedan with safety ratings so high that it’s beloved by South Asians across America. Instead, a pickup truck appears curbside at the Bluegrass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky. Sure, it is silver, and it is a Honda, but it’s also a full-blown pickup truck. The kind you see wobbling over rough terrain in television commercials, driven by burly men. Fore, noticing the surprise on my face, shrugs her shoulders and starts laughing. “I am a Southern girl at heart, what can I say?”

Fore, 36, is the chef and force behind the popular pop-up Tuk Tuk Sri Lankan Bites. She is based in Kentucky but travels around the country putting on dinners that showcase her upbringing as a child of both the American South and Sri Lankan immigrants. As an adult, certain terms slip out in Sinhalese first, English second, but get her excited and the thicker the gentle Southern drawl that punctuates her sentences becomes. Duke’s mayonnaise and Crystal hot sauce are just as at home in her cupboard as spices like turmeric, cinnamon, pandan leaf, and cardamom.

Sam Fore, in her home kitchen. Photo by Brian Kaiser

These two identities are the basis for Fore’s pop-up concept, which serves a Sri Lankan menu cooked through a Southern lens. Curried deviled eggs, tomato pie made with a turmeric-spiked crust and tamarind onions, curry meatball sandwiches on Hawaiian rolls topped with onion chutney and coconut gravy are all staples of her menu. Her fried chicken comes with a buttermilk brine but also curry leaf salt. Shrimp spiced with turmeric and goraka (a sour fruit) powder are piled high on a base of coconut-milk-simmered grits for her riff on the classic combo.

“If you think about the traditions of Southern cooking and the Southern table, they are very similar to Sri Lankan culture and the Sri Lankan table,” she says of the combination. “Southern cooking is meant for large groups of people. Same with Sri Lankan food. These aren’t just meant for one person.” Fore is also quick to point out that there isn’t just a cultural overlap, but shared ingredients and cooking techniques as well. “Okra was one of my favorite vegetables growing up,” she says. “Whether that was okra curry or Southern fried okra.” Beets and sorghum are common in both pantries too. She even mixes the stark white batter for appam, a fermented rice and coconut milk crepe, with the same technique that she uses to bring together pancake batter.