Kumar Wickramasingha: Sri Lankan finds a home in Iowa

Nation's Restaurant News,  May 12, 2003  by Amy Garber

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As a native of Sri Lanka, Kumar Wickramasingha grew up eating mostly rice and vegetables.

But when he moved to the United States to pursue his dream of becoming a restaurant owner; he ended up in a small town in Iowa, where meat and potatoes are staples. He also found that his formal education and previous foodservice experience as a banquet manager in Colombo, Sri Lanka--where he learned about American and French cuisine at a hotel filled with western tourists--carried no weight outside of his home country. So Wickramasingha had to start out as a dishwasher and work his way up from there.

Despite those challenges, he settled in Iowa, and after years of hard work, Wickramasingha was named executive chef of Alpha's on the Riverfront, and eventually he realized his lifelong goal when he bought the restaurant.

Wickramasingha says that over the years he has learned to accommodate local palates, but the chef remains determined to introduce his customers to Sri Lankan cuisine.

Title: chef-owner, Alpha's on the Riverfront, Fort Madison, Iowa

Birth date: Dec. 31,1966

Hometown: Mapara, Sri Lanka

Education: graduate of Sri Lanka Hotel School with a hotel management degree; graduate of Southeastern Community College in Burlington, Iowa

Career highlights: becoming chef-owner of Alpha's; losing a cooking contest but having help from his 8-year-old daughter who taught him "the important lesson that you can't win everything in life"; being profiled in foodservice magazines.

How did you end up in Iowa?

I had friends in Fort Madison that I met while in an exchange program [in high school], and they said I could stay with them so I did. I was 18 when I moved to the United States, and I got a job as a dishwasher. Being a banquet manager in Sri Lanka meant nothing here. I worked as a dishwasher during the day and went to school at night.

Do you like Iowa?

When I came to Iowa, I had moved from a city in Sri Lanka that had a population of at least 6 million people. The town where I live in Iowa has about 12,000 people. When I drive along the road, I see 10 pigs and 10 cows and maybe one person. For me that is the main attraction, the space and freedom.

Describe your restaurant, Alpha's on the Riverfront.

It is a 175-seat family-style restaurant that has about 4,500 square feet with another 1,000-square-foot banquet facility attached to it. The No. 1 thing in our restaurant is that 12,000 people live in this town so you get a lot of repeat business; that is your bread and butter. A lot of people want meat and potatoes for their meal. Grilled steak sells better than grilled fish, and this area is very famous for its pork producers so pork also is a big staple.

People are very price-conscious. You cannot sell a steak for more than $12 or $13 because customers will complain, 'for that price, I can buy a whole cow.'

How would you describe Sri Lankan cuisine?

The food is very spicy, and rice is the main dish. But when I worked in the hotel industry, they completely depended on foreign tourists so I was used to French and American cuisine. That is where I learned how to be creative because we would take a Sri Lankan dish and remove some of the hotness so it would appeal to western customers.

How is your native cuisine different from American food?

Here a meal can consist of steak and a small portion of vegetables and a starch. In Sri Lanka, the entree is rice and meat or fish are the accompaniment. We ate fish and vegetables while growing up, but the fish was only served in portions of maybe two spoonfuls. Some people in Sri Lanka are Buddhists, and most of them do not want to eat beef I would eat meat only very occasionally because the country is an island and that makes beef very expensive. Basically, I had to go to a wedding reception to get it.

Was it hard to cook with beef when you first moved to the United States?

Yes, it was a challenge. When I was a dishwasher, there were a lot of cooks around here, and I watched them and they taught me how to cook with meat.

How do you keep the menu interesting?

We run a lot of specials and change the menu often. When you run a steak special, you need to be able to disassemble the dish quickly You can come up with a nice sauce or a special butter, but a lot of people will request it on the side. Maybe one customer will order it as it is listed on the menu, but then another person, for instance, wants the sauce on the side and no green pepper.

Is it frustrating to get so many special orders?

At first I thought I was the big town chef and I would make my customers eat the dishes my way But I have learned that doesn't fly here. The other day someone wanted a prime rib sandwich without onions. When one of my cooks threw a tantrum, I said 'you are in Iowa.'

What are some of your favorite local ingredients?

I have discovered pork and balsamic vinegar. It is like bread and butter, or peas and carrots. That is howl came up with a marinated pork loin salad with mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes. I just entered it in a contest, and it won first place. When I first put the entree on the menu, nobody would order it, but eventually people came and tried it after it won the cooking contest. However, I had to list it on the menu with "No substitutes please."