Taste of Asia Jaffna Restaurant Colombo Sri Lanka - Jaffna Food Wellawatte Sri Lanka

Jaffna cuisine is Sri Lanka's only indigenous Tamil cuisine. Just like Sri Lankan Malay food, it started off South Indian hundreds of years ago and evolved into its own unique variant. Shamefully, though, if you ask the average Colombo-ite (Colombo-ian?) to take you for Tamil food, you'll likely end up at a South Indian vegetarian place.

This is because there are so many South Indian restaurants and hardly any Jaffna restaurants here (other than the over priced, now closed Peninsula and the over priced, still open Palmyrah at Hotel Renukah). If you wanted decently priced Jaffna food, you had to invite yourself over to a Tamil friend's house.

Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, with the end of the war, a couple more reasonably priced Jaffna restaurants have opened up. The first one, Taste of Asia opened just a few months ago on Galle Rd, Wellawatte (it's the sea side, between the checkpoint after the Savoy cinema and Kinross Ave, next to the Perera and Sons).




The ambience is something like a cafeteria / delicatessen - nice but basic and there's a few tables in the back room for dining - and, until 5pm, it pretty much, is just that. After 5pm is when it takes off its glasses, lets down its hair and begins serving Jaffna food.

The menu is decent enough and contains items like uppuma - steamed rulang you can eat like rice - vendaya kulambu and other unpronounceable delicacies as well as the standard poriyals, varais and curries.

The food is awesome. I don't know much about Jaffna food but I know what I like and I really like this. I suggest you start with uppuma, vedayan kulambu and a mutton poriyal and afterward go crazy.


Taste of Asia is not as cheap as the average South Indian restaurant but it is a lot cheaper than the options - you'll spend about LKR 300 per head - and the service is quite decent - the owner is a very pleasant gentleman and his staff seem to take after him.

A decent Jaffna restaurant is enough of a find. A cheap Jaffna food restaurant is even better.

Restaurant Name: Taste of Asia
Address: Galle Rd, Wellawatte / Colombo 6 (sea side between Ridgeway Pl and Kinross Ave)