The month of July ends today, and it was a really good one. We got to try out a few new restaurants in Colombo, and renew our memories of some of the old favorites.
So here are 5 of the best dishes we had throughout this month.
Fried Lotus Root with Pork – Chinese Delight
Colombo doesn’t have a shortage of Chinese restaurants, and Chinese Delight is the newest addition on the block.
Despite their steep prices, we really liked the Fried Lotus Root with Pork (Rs. 1088), which comes with an abundance of crunchy, delicious lotus stem, along with 5 or 6 thinly sliced, big pieces of well-cooked pork. While the pork itself was juicy, chewy, and salivatingly good, the whole dish had a good spicy kick to it, which comes from the bell pepper and capsicum. This is a good one to pair with some steamed jasmine rice, or a classic fried rice.
Breakfast Taco – HolyBelly
Holybelly is the latest brunch/cafe spot in town, which serve up some good coffee, smoothies and all day breakfast items. Their Breakfast Taco (Rs. 850) was particularly good, which we thoroughly enjoyed.
It’s basically an open taco with a creamy and cheesy scrambled egg, a few tortilla chips bedded on a tortilla wrap, which made for a filling and succulent dish. You can fold it up and eat it like a taco or even a burrito because the wrap was quite big.
While the eggs were the star of the dish, the wrap was well-cooked and had a slight crunch to it. All in all, it's a great breakfast/brunch option.
Black Belt – Box-O-Noodles
Boy! Never have I ever loved a vegetarian noodles like this! Box-O-Noodles does all-day noodles in many interesting ways, plus they have dine-in, take-away and delivery. Their noodles are delicious, and reasonably priced, which makes this place a total win.
The Black Belt is the only veg option in their noodles menu, and it was the star of our meal. It came with a generous amount of golden deep fried tofu and shiitake mushrooms, cooked in sweet soy sauce. While the tofu had a very crispy outer layer, the mushrooms were fresh and chewy. The seasoning was very light, and had very less sauce in it, which makes it even better.
Wholegrain Sourdough – Plus Nine Four
Here's another vegetarian dish that we thoroughly enjoyed this month. We discovered this at Plus Nine Four, which is another new, yet amazing cafe that serves up a range of healthy food and drinks which you can enjoy sitting under the shade.
Our favorite was the Wholegrain Sourdough (Rs. 700) which comes with mushroom garlic toast, seeni sambol, and basil. The Sourdough they use is from bread.lk, and it was fresh, crunchy and flavorful.
Topped with a seeni sambol that has the sweet and spicy elements in the right balance, the mushrooms were just cooked without any strong flavors, leaving the seeni sambol to be the highlight. This is a well-executed dish that both meat lovers and vegeterians can enjoy.
Chicken Alfredo – Rocco’s
Rocco's is no stranger to the residents around Nawala Rajagiriya area, as it has been one of the few, consistenly good Italian restaurants in Colombo, that serves up some delicious wood-fired, thin crust pizza.
However, in our recent visit, we realized that they've really upped their pasta game, and this plate of Chicken Alfredo (Rs. 1000) is enough proof for that. It was a penne pasta perfectly cooked in al dante, smothered with creamy alfredo sauce. While that creaminess left creases on our lips, it had plenty of chicken bits to go with every bite.
So there you have it. We got to try some incredible meals this month, and these 5 are the highlights that we suggest you should try out as well.
See you next month!
