Cinnamon Room (Jetwing Lighthouse):
You don’t hear about it often. But we hear here’s where international authors gracing the Galle Literary Festival had their last supper before flying airport-bound air taxis. Apparently, they arrived late. Time didn’t permit a seven-course meal. But they refused, absolutely refused, to relinquish a morsel, preferring to risk their flights. For Cinnamon Room reigns with undisputed supremacy in gastronomic realms.
Colombo’s eateries increasingly disillusion. This Christmas day to Galle, I say! For season’s meetings, more the merrier. Otherwise, take along a charming companion: the setting ravishes. Terraces flirt with willing seas; inside, quaint bulbous lights fawn on spruce candelabras.
But under a wooden roof evoking Japanese monasteries unfolds cuisine monastic in its discipline. No crib about the bread- they could’ve walked out of France, except you wouldn’t get kurakkan loaf in France. Indeed, the entire meal could have happened in France, at a mighty Michelin-starrer too.
The menu doesn’t just sound good, it tastes good. The freshest lettuce contorts like modern art beside tender terrine of grilled peppers, zucchini and mozzarella served with red lentil cooked to a precision Quantum Physics demands and in the most delicate coriander vinaigrette. Lemon grass tinted clear soup with buoying yams of such terribly perfect textures is a masterstroke of subtlety and sobriety. I await a débacle on the next course: fricassée of Abalone mushrooms in savoury pancake but, it’s impeccably cooked cubed mushrooms in a white lace handkerchief of a pancake.
 |
| Cool stuff: Cocoa Veranda’s Frappe Christmas |
Passion fruit and crushed pepper sorbet, cribbed in sculpted passion fruit halves, is Lanka’s best, this alone not being a frozen sugared lump. Mains: Baked pumpkin ravioli and gobi kebab with spicy Thai basil cream and crispy leeks might sound calamitous. Unless a master creator has composed it. Just looking at the ravioli, you know.
Then, cheeses are plattered prettily with grapes, celery and slick biscuit sticks. Enfin, Pastry Chef Srimal’s Italian-style balsamic macerated strawberry ivory chocolate, if slightly sweet, is subdued by orange glaze.
Supper ends. Executive Chef Nihal Senanayake isn’t one of those chefs given to conceited creations with little consideration for one’s palate or one’s wallet. I enquire about the impossibly perfect ravioli. Only an Italian or the best Michelin-starred chef could have effected it. And, of course, chef says he learned from an Italian chef. Yet, reproducing Italian technique is the accomplishment.
Chef has also long worked with French chefs (hence the nimble touch) and rarefied his technique in Geneva, Vienna and Cologne. I’m curious why they haven’t won culinary awards. It would seem certain hotels zealously invest on competition-winning. Chef Nihal, who heads the regional Culinary Guild, says they prefer satisfying their guests. That’s perhaps why Jetwing swept the most prestigious of awards, the World Travel Awards for Sri Lanka.
The country’s best gastronomic restaurant offers mains from Rs 1000 (no excuse for $10 desserts elsewhere in Galle...). Provided Chef Nihal is cooking (I don’t vouch for sous chefs...), I robustly recommend Cinnamon Room this Christmas. Or save the best for the last: The New Year’s Eve blast!
After Christmas Eve vigils? Cinnamon Café (with terraces that sit on the seas) gives an abundant Sri Lankan breakfast buffet, including thosais, chutney and sambaru (reminding that Tamils partake of the population…) and explosive spices (reminding that Lankans consume spiced cuisine...). Besides live stations for eggs, waffles, meats, there are civilised sugar-free yoghurts, jams, smoothies and also a healthy local clientele!
Fresh, light food ensures that after seven gourmet courses or a breakfast banquet you don’t walk, you fly out. Get set for jet-set at Jetwing!
Upper Room (Heritance Ahungalla):
Multi-award-winning Chef Dimuthu Kumarasinghe’s office announces “Celebrity Chef” (not without irony, we hope) and Chef Dimuthu announces his 5-course Chocolate menu. Expect: Taste Bud Teaser (cheesy chocolate crab, mango soufflé, beetroot & orange), Cocoa & Coffee Magical Awakening Liquid (the ostentatiously christened concoction is mushroom cappuccino drizzled in chocolate), Sweet Zinger (white chocolate lemongrass sorbet), Chocolate Highlight (prunes & honey glazed breast of duck, pan seared rack of lamb with thyme chocolate jus on choc-chip pumpkin, leek truffle ragout). Feastivities close with Delightful Wrap Up (warm chocolate mousse with espresso soaked sponge & amaretto sabayon) and a bill of Rs 7500/head. The glamorous-sounding menu is perhaps Sri Lanka’s first chocolate menu, and would excite those unacquainted with such like. Chocolate menus leave me blasé, but technique still tickles me. Besides, novelty has its allures.
I prefer Chef Lalith Gunasekara’s award-winning Sri Lankan Nouvelle/Noel cuisine: four-course beach dinner. This could comprise pickled mango and savoury cashew paté, curried ambarella soup and a most excellent vegetable mustard stew wrapped in cheesed leaf, sauté spinach with lentil, tomato curry sauce and sticky lime pickle rice that wonderfully fuses kiri bath and South Indian curd rice. Dessert is curd, passion fruit and jaggery terrine in cinnamon treacle and lovely rose apple, young coconut and kamaranka in peanut caramel. Supper could also be orchestrated in the seductions of your suite. Book the Tendulkar Suite sporting Tendulkar mementos. Sup on terraces expansive over the seas, unless bathroom Jacuzzi dining appeals.
Try also cocktails and canapés by the spectacular pool, when not demolishing huge homemade ice cream sandwiches whilst smoking super ice cream cigars. Some like to feed the body and others prefer to knead the body. The hotel’s spa excels. Try perhaps Sri Lanka’s only four-hand massage performed by super-skilled Balinese masseuses.
Coco Veranda:
The Christmas menu includes turkey club sandwich in Colombo’s only real ciabata. And do traverse Coco’s Christmas coffees. Imagine Santa cloaked in cinnamon and nutmeg somersaulting on cappuccino and you have Santa Cappuccino with its cone of whipped cream like Santa’s upturned beard. Double Nutmeg Latte in a long glass stretches the spice route up the milky way whilst Mocha Mint Sprint negotiates Christmas warmth and winter cool. Cooler still is the three-tiered Ice Caramel Latte, but the coolest is Frappe Christmas. What a sensation of seasonal fruit and smooth coffee. As for the teasing, pleasing composition, creator Mr Nawaz, keeps it clandestine. Only when I call it the most perfect coffee in the entire universe does Mr Nawaz hint, “No, it would be better with fresh cherries instead of maraschino cherries.” No more revelations except that this enormous fantasy frappe is Rs 620. That’s what a cherry Christmas costs nowadays! |
E-mail
