Best Burger of 2008 at Gardenia Cafe, Holiday Inn - Fast food in Colombo Sri Lanka

The year has been a tumultuous one. Lehman Brothers and Danduwam Mudalali, failed in different ways. Asantha De Mel left his office, poppin' his zero cost collar and blaming everyone else.

Yet us Sri Lankans continue caring for nothing other than what's for dinner (heta marunath...). But in our precarious economic times, we have cut back, eating it as cheaply as we can. Maybe the paang has less maalu, maybe the sambol has less pol. But we cannot give it up completely for then the economic terrorists would have won.

For our personal stand against indigence and gloom, we go to the Gardenia Coffee Shop at the Holiday Inn hotel in Colombo. Coffee shops in posh hotels are really good places to eat cheap and this is no exception. It is fairly nicely done in with banquettes to sit on and the pool to look at. The only objectionable elements are the menu and table mats, cheaply printed and laminated as if at a greasy diner.

Selara River Guest Uda Walawe / Embilipitiya Sri Lanka Hotel Review - Selara River Hideout

Embilipitiya is one of our new urban centers, 200km from Colombo. Drive into town and you can see a town that in a few years will become a city. When my dad was doing an agribusiness here, we used to stay at Centauria. Now, however, they have overbuilt the place - the view from the restaurant of the lake is no more, cut down the menu - no more wild boar! and overpriced it - last time I asked, LKR 7,500 was the half board rate, which is like paying LKR 3 million for a Maruti.

When I had to go there recently, a colleague recommended Selara River Guest. As it's only about 15km from Embilipitiya on the Pelmadulla-Embilipitiya Road, I thought I'd try it. We turned left at the Uda Walawe turn off (Walawe Handiya) and about 5km down the road, you turn right and drive about 1km of jungly road: we had complaints from the driver that there couldn't be a hotel in such an area.

The Sun House Galle Sri Lanka Hotel Review - Brunching outside the Omelette

Breakfast may be the most important meal of the day. But even at luxury hotels, you get the same old, same old: a choice of English (meat, eggs, toast, coffee), continental (English minus the meat and eggs) and Sri Lankan breakfasts (string hoppers and such).

I was complaining about this to my wife when we went to the Sun House in Galle for our anniversary. It is a colonial-era bungalow built by a Scottish (Broon!) spice merchant that has been converted into a 7 room hotel. It's really well done: they've kept the colonial style but added modern furniture and design touches. And they've cranked the colour wheel to 11 - everything in the rooms that isn't white is riotously colourful.

Day Trip to Yapahuwa Rock Fortress via Kurunegala Sri Lanka - Chop Suey and Chinese Lions

Sometimes, when visiting places in Sri Lanka, multiple days aren't required. The island is small enough that a 3 hour drive out of Colombo can take you somewhere completely different.

Yapahuwa is one of these places. In the 13th century, one of our kings, seeing how well Sigiriya had turned out for King Kasyapa, (Tangent: Actually if King Kasyapa had just stayed on the rock and lobbed things at his enemies, he'd've done fine. What's the point of a giant rock fortress if you're not going to use it?) decided to build his palace on another giant rock. Unfortunately for us sightseer types (and I suppose fortunately for those who had to actually carve and carry things up the rock), his ambitions were nowhere as lofty as Kasyapa. And his subsequent PR was also nowhere nearly as good as Kasyapa.


This lack of Sigiriya level awareness means, however, that Yapahuwa is nowhere nearly as crowded as Sigiriya is. And while it is not as impressive as Sigiriya, it still is pretty impressive.

First, you get the iconic stone staircase with the Chinese lions, the ones on our ten rupee note. Looking at it makes you queasy as its steepness makes it feel like you're going to be climbing one of those rollercoaster rails that curls back on itself. As you climb, though, your confidence increases till, at the top, you pretty much could be the king, looking out and surveying all the land you reign over.


For most people, that's it. However, from there, you can walk through a forest path to the top. The path is overgrown and all the signs tell you not to go past the staircase area but you should. It's worth it when you reach the top and survey that vista.

Yapahuwa should be done as a day trip. This is how I would do it: Leave at 9am - weekdays (except Tuesdays: it is closed) are preferable as it is less crowded - from Colombo.

Stop at Diya Dahara Hotel in Kurunegala - which is right by the lake - for lunch. Get a table by the lake and order the Diya Dahara House Special which is a gigantic, incredibly tasty Sri Lankan chop suey - one dish is enough for about 3 people. Gorge on the chop suey while enjoying the lake view and a couple of beers. Leave for Yapahuwa by 1:30pm, climb it by 3pm (wait for sunset if you can) and you can be back in Colombo by 9pm. The Cholas never had it this easy.

Hotel Name: Diya Dahara
Address: 7 North Lake Rd, Kurunegala
Phone: (037) 222 3452
More Pictures: Picasaweb

Hantana Shadow Resort Kandy Sri Lanka Hotel Review - Children of the Black Forest - Hanthana Hantane Hanthane

What I love about the type of hotels (cheap!) I usually stay at is that they are usually built, owned and run by people who are from the area and not professional hoteliers. As they are not professionals, they avoid the common pitfalls that the chains make (like offering bland, washed out, often boiled western food that their cooks barely know how to make instead of good spicy eastern food).

On the other hand, they also do not always know how to access the right kind of assistance to maximise the natural benefits of the place they build their hotel in and add those minor touches of quality that can make a 5,000 rupee a night hotel feel like a night at a 20,000 rupee hotel. If SLTB could take 5% of what they spend on attending trade fairs in other countries and use that to pay some experienced hotelier to visit and advise our indigenous hotels on the details, the tourism industry could see real growth as the diversity of experiences our indigenous hoteliers offer is exactly what higher end tourists are looking for.

Hantana (Hanthane? Hantane?) Shadow Resort is one of these hotels. It is 15 minutes from Kandy town and set into the slope of a mountain covered with pine trees. The hotel rooms are built in between the trees creating the feeling that somehow the rooms have existed as long as the forest has. Step outside the room and it's like living in an Enid-Blyton-Magic-Faraway-Tree forest, especially at night when the widely spaced lights add luminosity to the scene.

Burger's King - Mr Burger King - Malay St Chicken Shawarma - Fast Food Colombo Sri Lanka

(click here to see more reviews of burgers in Sri Lanka)
(click here to see more reviews of fast food places in Sri Lanka)

Naming conventions are an odd thing in Sri Lanka. Many shops have rip off names, taking a well known name and modifying it just a little bit. Whether it's a little guy running a pastry shop called Move'n'Pick (Dharmapala Mw), a medium guy running a clothes store called Opel (Ethul Kotte Rd) or a big guy running a security firm called Ceylinco CISCO (everywhere, it seems), this is an accepted part of Sri Lankan business life.

Accordingly, the son of the fabled Nana's (the name of which was ripped off over and over again - there must be ten thousand Nana's in Sri Lanka) has set up Mr Burger King. Leaving alone the debate as to whether a royal personage could be referred to "Mister," we can instead focus on the food. And the location.

Victoria Golf Club Chalets Digana Kandy Sri Lanka Hotel Review

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(Updated Sep 2010)

We visited the Chalets at Victoria Golf Course last year as a one night stopover on the way from Dambulla to Nuwara Eliya. We needed a place to stay in Kandy and we just didn't want to stay in the usual city hotels with their abundance of cement and steel. A friend recommended the Chalets and, even though they're a bit out of the way - Digana is 15 to 20 min from Kandy town -we thought, what the hey and went.

Rice and Curry on the A1 (Colombo Puttalam Road) - Road Food

Driving on Sri Lankan rural roads is heaven. The main roads are usually carpeted, well maintained and traffic-free. But I also mean it in an aesthetic sense: rural roads here are surrounded by lush greenery, ancient trees, flowers (which I struggle to grow in my own garden) growing wild, lakes, sea, beach, cloudless blue skies and sunsets.

But what is usually difficult to find is a nice place to eat in the midst of this splendor. Usually, it's a dark, dank shop where the tables face the road and the view is only used to dump garbage from the kitchen. The rice and curries in such places are usually good but it is really difficult to find a place which lets in at least some of the beauty of the surroundings while you gorge on far too much rice and a tiny little bit of curry.

After many, many trips, my wife found this little place, a bath kade, on the A1 which runs from Colombo to Puttalam, which goes some way towards bridging this gap. It is at the 63rd km post on the A1 where on the land side you see a sign "Little Hut Bath Buffet."

It is a tiny little place but where you sit is in the greenery as you can see from the photos. The food is quite good with quite a bit of variety. It cost around Rs 150 for a meat rice and curry (mas kaama, dude!)


Restaurant Name: Little Hut Bath Buffet
Address: 63km post, Colombo-Puttalam Rd (about 1.5 hrs out of Colombo on a good day)

Five Stars on the Cheap at Taprobane Coffee Shop Cinnamon Grand - Restaurant Review Colombo Sri Lanka

In my previous existence in New York City, we used to go to the most upscale restaurants and see how we could come out with the lowest bill. We used to call this game 'Being Broke.' Or 'Being Poor.'

Here in Sri Lanka, the way to do this is to go into a posh hotel and eat at the coffee shop of said hotel. Taprobane Coffee Shop at the Cinnamon Grand is such a place - I discovered it after a heavy night out (this was before I got married and started falling asleep at 10pm) The ambience is really nice - the view is better than most hotel coffee shops except for the Hilton - and the menu is extensive and cheap.

Rock View Motel Sinharaja Sri Lanka Hotel Review - Kalawana Ratnapura

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(Updated Sep 2010)

Many hotels in Sri Lanka have evocative names that they do not live up to - "beach" hotels with minimal, unswimmable beaches, "resorts" which barely meet the criteria of a single star and "eco" lodges which are eco only because the plumbing doesn't work.

Rock View Hotel (Motel?), near the Sinharaja rainforest, is not guilty of this. The view from each room (on the upper floor, at least) is breathtaking. Standing as it does, on the edge of a tea mountain (mountain of tea?), the view from the balcony is of the entire valley below and of the hilly range above it, encompassing paddy fields, pine forests, mountains and mist.

Chicken Rice at 88 Chinese Restaurant Colombo Sri Lanka

88 Chinese looks like the usual Sri Lankan Chinese restaurant with fried rice and hot butter cuttlefish galore. When we go to 88, however, we do not order the usual. We order "chicken rice." I suppose it's Hainanese Chicken Rice but that's not what we order. We order "chicken rice" and that's what we get.


Chicken rice is a plate of soy/scallion/ginger sauce-flecked rice with slices of chicken on top (the chicken is stuffed with scallion/ginger, roasted and cooled: while it's normally done by hanging the roasted chicken outside the shop for a day, here it's probably in a bath of iced water) and a side of chili sauce.

Bopath Fall Rock Chalets Kuruwita Ratnapura Sri Lanka Hotel Review - Bopath Falls Rock Chalets

The hotel trade in Sri Lanka is an odd business. Down south, cookie cutter hotels with blue pools and blah buffets next to a sliver of beach are full every weekend while one in gorgeous low country tea land, right next to a waterfall in an intensively green, landscaped environment languishes, empty.

Bopath Ella Rock Chalets Hotel is in Kuruwita, just about 2 hours from Colombo before Ratnapura. Tip: The hotel can be reached by the main Kuruwita Bopath Ella Road or a road before that where the hotel sign actually is. But don't take the road where the hotel sign is - it's awful. Take the main Kuruwita Bopath Ella Road to the hotel and your car will thank you.

World's End Lodge Eagles Nest - Lower Ohiya Sri Lanka Hotel Review - Horton Plains

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(Updated Sep 2010)

Judging a hotel by how you get to it is like judging a book by its cover. The drive to World's End Lodge, Lower Ohiya (drive on the A4 past Belihuloya and turn right at Kalupahana Junction and keep going up, up and up) was excruciating. When we turned off from the A4, we saw some lights, high up and far in the distance, and joked that that was where we were going. When we got to the hotel, we felt like a couple of jokers: that was where we were. The last bit of the climb is a series of hair pin bends with signs painted on rocks urging you forward "just a hop skip and a jump," etc.

We walked out of the car around midnight - we left at 7pm - and our minds were blown. There is no light pollution and you're high up on a mountain: the stars are clearly visible, seemingly just out of reach. For me, it was as if I was really seeing our night skies for the first time, so clear were they. Another sign of how high this was - even inside the room, you can hear the wind whistling and swirling around angrily, banging at the windows.

The Mudhouse Anamaduwa Puttalam Sri Lanka Hotel Review - The Mud House

Quick, where does anyone stay in Puttalam district? Apart from Dhammika Holiday Resort which does not overcome its unpromising name and Puttalam Rest House, there's pretty much nothing. Just before a monitoring visit to Puttalam, however, a friend told me about the Mudhouse which is in Anamaduwa off the Puttalam Kurunegala Rd.

The way there is promising, beginning with a massive rock formation in a clearing and getting progressively junglier.From the Anamaduwa turnoff, there's no point giving directions as the road is fairly windy. When I went, a guide on a motorcycle from the hotel stayed at the turnoff and went in front of our car to show us the way. The way there is promising, beginning with a massive rock formation in a clearing and getting progressively junglier. It took about 20 minutes and I went in a car but it'd be better to take a higher clearance vehicle.

Mrs Warusawithana's Lamprais - Green lumps of goodness

This blog reviews places to eat. However, there are times when a lengthy review is unnecessary as usually the food is great but the menu is limited and the ambience is non existent. This is one of those times.

We’ll start with a place where the ambience is defined by a white cord and a red paper label. The Lamprais House which is run by the Lamprais Lady and her Lamprais Son down Lamprais Lane provides take away lamprais, the best thing to come out of the Netherlands since pot in coffee bars and legalised prostitution (If New Amsterdam followed Old Amsterdam closely, Elliot Spitzer wouldn’t be in so much trouble).

Thilanka Hotel and Spa Sigiriya Dambulla Sri Lanka Hotel Review

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(Updated Sep 2010)

When people in Sri Lanka go to watch cricket in Dambulla, where do they stay? Habarana or Kandalama or Sigiriya are the usual answers. Recently, we visited Thilanka Resort and Spa in Dambulla itself, of which, thanks to its unprepossessing name, we weren't expecting much. But we did have this to go on - one of our fussy friends (only stays at the Hilton residencies when visiting Sri Lanka) enjoyed it. So we crossed our fingers and booked a room for a weekend night.

Long Feng Singapore Restaurant Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo Sri Lanka - Trans Asia Hotel Restaurant Review

We Sri Lankans eat Chinese food till MSG bubbles out of our ears. And we love chilli and coconut. Put these together and you have Singaporean food. Recently, to my particular joy, two Singaporean places opened up. Prima Taste I've reviewed here and didn't like much. This review is of the second one, Long Feng at Trans Asia, which after being purchased by a conglomerated colonial cold cut company (Keells!), changed from a Chinese restaurant into a Singaporean one.

As you enter Long Feng, you are greeted effusively. As if they worry that, for us Sri Lankans, a leap from Chinese to Singaporean is just not something that is comprehensible or accessible. As if they hope to compensate by overservicing us till we no longer care what kind of food we're eating.

That effusiveness goes on throughout the meal as two, sometimes three waiters fall over themselves to bring us water, menus, wine lists and, finally, the food. The food is propelled out of the kitchen by a foreign-sounding yelling, something like a combination of Chef! from the BBC and a kung fu movie. We asked the waitstaff and found out that the Singaporean chef does not like his food to be kept waiting.

And the chef would be right. Food this good should be fed directly into my stomach through a tube. We started with the laksa lemak, as Singaporean as a ban on chewing gum, spicy, coconutty, eggy and not too fishy. A goldilocks of a soup. This was followed by the sambal fried rice which we had with lamb in a clay pot and a cuttlefish dish, the name of which escapes my memory but is remembered (fondly) by my belly. The fried rice's spicing was very balanced, allowing me to taste not only the major themes of soya sauce and egg but also the herbs (lemongrass? coriander?).

We also usually sit in the outside bit overlooking the Beira terrace which is very romantic and (these days at least) non smelly. The pricing is very reasonable as we've never exceeded LKR 800-1000 per head for the food nett (Tip: Portion sizes are big - a "small" feeds three people). We have visited the restaurant 4 times since it opened, with a mixture of relatives and friends in tow, and each time the response has been pretty good.

The cautious, boring world of Colombo five star dining is something that we have known of for a while - no risks are taken and no new cuisines are served unless 4 other hotels have done it already. Trans Asia must be commended for taking a step into relatively risky ground and for doing it so well.

Restaurant Name: Long Feng
Address: Trans Asia Hotel, 115, Sir Chittampalam A. Gardiner Mawatha, Colombo 02
Phone: (add 011 from a mobile) 2 491949 ext.1949

The Burgers of Sri Lanka (BARS Cafe Colombo Sri Lanka)

(I've added other burger related posts here)

We've been passing BARS quite often as it's right on Duplication Rd though the address is 24 Deal Place. The ambience is promising with the option of outside dining, overlooking the splendor of Duplication Rd. The other thing in its favour is the music: cool, chill, soothing and groovy music that complements the upscale roadside vibe of the restaurant.

Prima Taste Singaporean Restaurant Rajagiriya Colombo Sri Lanka Review

I’ve always liked Singaporean food. Liked it enough that I used to plan day long stopovers in Singapore just to eat at hawker centers. The Malay ingredients, the Chinese methods and the Indian spices that make up Singaporean cuisine go to show that Asian fusion is not something Western chefs invented recently.

Recently, two Singaporean places opened up. Prima, probably the only Singapore-based food company mentioned in an act of parliament, opened a branch of its Prima Taste chain at its office building in Rajagiriya. And Trans Asia, recently purchased by a purveyor of processed, precooked meat products (Keells!), also changed their Chinese restaurant, Long Feng, into a Singaporean one.