From the anxiety of brewing liqueurs in-house to the confidence of evolving a sea-side bar destination, Don Ranasinghe breaks down the miracle of building Smoke & Bitters.
When asked to define good hospitality, Smoke & Bitters' bartender-owner shrugs off canned truisms such as 'making the impossible happen'. Instead, he cites an old Sri Lankan saying: "When you have a guest over, the tea is incredibly sweet." As sugar was once expensive, using a lot of it was a show of esteem – a statement that your guest deserves the best you can offer.
At its finest, hospitality is something else entirely: intuitive, rooted in a genuine curiosity about people. Ranasinghe had to travel a long way, in more senses than one, to understand how this expression can take shape. Today, it manifests in a modern Sri Lankan hub shaped by the experience and friendships he built in London.
Sri Lanka via London
Ranasinghe was born in London to a Sri Lankan family who arrived in the late 1970s, fleeing political and economic instability. At 18, he walked into Camden's famous Koko and asked for a job, starting as a glass collector before working his way up over a decade. Alongside him was childhood friend Lahiru 'Lalla' Perera, who later returned to Sri Lanka, settling on the southern coast and opening restaurants along Mirissa Beach. Ranasinghe's yearly visits deepened a quiet hunger to connect with an ancestral home he'd not yet known. 
Lahiru Perera and Don Ranasinghe founded Smoke & Bitters in 2020
So Ranasinghe moved back in 2016, before opening Smoke & Bitters four years later. He says this time in between was vital to his success: "You have to really understand who you are and where you're coming from to be able to deliver hospitality. For me to understand how to deliver Sri Lankan hospitality, it took that amount of time."
Building the foundation
When Don discovered the unique site for Smoke & Bitters – an empty coconut grove on a road that ran near a surf break – it was the sunset that caught his eye. By opening daily at 5pm, the bar builds the sunset into the guest experience. "The sunset is our ritual," he says. "It's this God-given thing, which we're able to celebrate every day." 
Smoke & Bitters opened amid turbulent times in Sri Lanka
Despite the constant glow of the sunset, the country was still reeling from instability. A thirty-year civil war ended in 2009. That recovery was interrupted by the Easter Sunday bombings of 2019. Then there was Covid, followed by one of the worst sovereign debt crises in 2022, which emptied the shops of fuel and medicine. "We never really had one or two solid years without some kind of interruption", he cites. Yet in observing how "last year, even the slow season was quite busy," Ranasinghe sees hospitality as key to the bar's continued success amidst adversity: "what's key in hospitality is feeling – how do you inspire that within someone?"
Born from a shared pride in Sri Lankan heritage, Smoke & Bitters began as a gathering of friends with a vision. The name says it all: 'smoke' speaks to the open-air smokehouse, which co-founder Lala's food menu comes to life with cooking over indigenous Sri Lankan woods; 'bitters' nods to Ranasinghe's passion for cocktail curation. In the background, Avisha De Saram, a lifelong friend, dreamt up the tropical modernist interior. As well, Prasanna Segarajasekeran, another friend and fashion designer by trade, produced the intricate batik textile prints for the tabletops. "I almost miss those times..." Ranasinghe muses "...we were on a pathway to something, but we didn't know where it was going. Every day was an adventure."
The anxiety of service
With cocktails showcasing local gins and a spice and citrus-forward food menu reminiscent of Sri Lankan home cooking, the menu at Smoke & Bitters was born as much from necessity as its own philosophy. Punishing import duties on foreign spirits and liqueurs urged Ranasinghe to build drinks around what the island offered. 
Locally harvested ingredients and traditional methods are key to its drinks programme
Leaning on arrack distilled from the sap of coconut flowers, local gins sourced from small family-owned distilleries and even advice from a bartender friend in London for making bitters and liqueurs from scratch, Ranasinghe discovered that much of the best produce had been around him all along, cultivated almost entirely for export.
As a result, a commitment to Sri Lankan ingredients shines in the continuous development of its vast food and drinks menu. Take narung, for instance: a citrus fruit somewhere between calamansi and lime that is juiced daily for the signature No.23 tequila-based cocktail.
Forgotten ingredients that Lalla had quietly been cataloguing in his cooking were dusted off and recontextualised. Arrack is used to season charred prawns, and kiri hodhi (milk curry) balances the smoke of the charcoal cabbage. What had begun as a workaround quietly became a statement: a food and drinks menu forged by the spirit of discovery carried forth by a chef and bartender duo committed to rediscovering Sri Lankan heritage along the way.
Growing the team
From a team of six serving 25 to 30 guests each evening, Smoke & Bitters now welcomes between 250 and 300 guests a day. Nearly all of the 60-strong team come from the surrounding villages. The team's success in retaining a reputation for warmth stems from a deep investment in people and place. "When you're training people from zero, you're able to instill your own culture." Ranasinghe distills this ethos into two pillars: the capacity to listen and the eagerness to bounce back from missteps. 
The 60-strong Smoke & Bitters team
"If you have this outlook – that you just want anybody to be heard, to feel welcome, whether in your home or your bar – that's key to bringing them back." He adds that failure is a moment of opportunity, where an unsettled guest is not seen as a problem to manage but rather "an opportunity to really make them feel like you are there to look after them."
For the Smoke & Bitters team, winning the Michter's Art of Hospitality Award has been nothing short of extraordinary. That this is the second consecutive year the accolade has gone to a South Asian bar is, Ranasinghe believes, no coincidence. "I don't think it's a mistake," he says. "I think that's naturally just our hospitality." What he hopes more than anything, is that the recognition travels to people in Sri Lanka who may not yet realise the best cocktails are right at home.
The two-and-a-half-hour drive from the Sri Lankan capital Colombo makes Smoke & Bitters a popular weekend excursion for those in the know. Guests arrive with a commitment already made. "We feel the weight of their expectations," Ranasinghe asserts. "It's always on our mind."
Smoke & Bitters is the winner of the Michter's Art of Hospitality Award as part of Asia's 50 Best Bars 2026. This list will be revealed at a live awards ceremony at Wynn Resorts on 28 July.
