(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 ...
Rubber SoulKalutara. What is it known for really, other than somewhere to stop, drop in a coin and pray that you get to somewhere nicer? Turns out Kalutara, the district anyway, has nice areas and Halketha - in Mathugama, 75 km from Colombo - is in one of these.We were looking for somewhere to go and found it in the ...
(Click here for more posts about hotels in Sri Lanka)(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 ...
You Should Coco(Click here for more posts about burgers in Sri Lanka)(Click here for more posts about restaurants/places to eat in Sri Lanka)Paying more than LKR 200 for coffee at a coffee shop seems insane to me. For a few (hundred) rupees more, you can drink a beer on the Galle Face terrace. Given this choice, I’d always go for ...
(Click here for more posts about restaurants/places to eat in Sri Lanka)Regional variations don't seem to exist in Sri Lanka any more: it seems too small now to have anything that's uniquely from an area. You can eat Chilaw Crab curry anywhere in the country and no one - not even the cook - even knows it's from there. Wherever ...
What is serendipity?Just before I got married, I decided I wanted to do a trip around Sri Lanka on my own. I didn't understand exactly why I did but I wanted solitude, maybe to understand myself, maybe to bid my misspent youth a fare thee well, before I took the biggest step of my life.On my way, I went to ...
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 ...
(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 ...
(Click here for more posts about hotels, guest houses and holiday villas / bungalows in Sri Lanka) In 2008, I have stayed at over 30 hotels. Of some of these - the ones that either impress or depress me greatly - I have written about in this blog. Toward the end of the year, I had to visit Badulla for ...
Despite the Sinharaja rainforest being the single most popular destination among local tourists - or maybe because it is? - there are very few hotels there. I've already reviewed Rock View Motel near Sinharaja which is a basic, low-priced experience at around LKR 5,000 full board double. And here is a review of Boulder Garden, a posh but occasionally dank ...
If you need a place to stay on your way to Pinnawela (27km), Kurunegala (30km) or Kandy (60km) or you just want a quiet place to hang out for a weekend, you could do a lot worse than Thirasara Leisure Village in Thulhiriya. Actually, you'd have to go pretty far in any direction to find a better place in this ...
In Sri Lanka, that hoary old cliche about the journey being better than the destination is actually true. What I have enjoyed most about my travels to hotels and bungalows around the country is the drive there.You pass forests, waterfalls, rivers and see ancient trees, massive bougainvilleas just growing wild on the roadside, green fields pregnant with paddy.Some of the ...
(Click here for more posts about Jaffna Tamil food / cuisine and hotels in Jaffna Sri Lanka)(Click here for more posts about restaurants/places to eat in Sri Lanka)Jaffna's cuisine embraced the peninsula's limitations and evolved in glorious isolation from the Indian subcontinent and the rest of Sri Lanka. Accordingly, Jaffna food is very different from the rest of Sri Lanka's ...
(Click here for other fine dining options in Sri Lanka)(Click here for more posts about restaurants/places to eat in Sri Lanka) Recently, we dined at Park Street Mews,a new bistro style restaurant with a lounge and dining space, on Park Street in Colombo 2. (Legally, new restaurants can only open in streets named Park). From the outside, it looks just ...
(Click here for more posts about hotels in Sri Lanka)I'd forgotten Negombo existed as a place to visit. Maybe it's because it's so close. It takes around an hour to drive there from Colombo and it's just fifteen minutes from the airport. It's like going to Moratuwa for a vacation. Sometimes, Moratuwa can take longer to get to.But exist it ...
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 ...
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 ...
Stuff Posh People Like: Saivara FareIn Colombo, we're blessed with an abundance of restaurants serving Tamil vegetarian food. The usual suspects like the Mathuras and the Shanthi Vihars litter the streets of Colombo, serving acres and acres of dosa nightly.My favourite such place is a little less well known. It's also not as nice but 1) it's also cheaper 2) ...
(Click here for more posts about hotels in Sri Lanka)(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 ...
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 ...
