The Savoury Monkey.

The Savoury Monkey is a new home baker based in Sri Jayawardenapura, serving both sweet and savoury treats. They're very new, as demonstrated by a visit to their Facebook page, which has few pictures and even less information. You have to message them to ask about what they offer, since the Facebook page lacks a menu/price listt. The week we ordered they only had brownies and strawberry tarts on offer, so those were what we went with.

The Desserts

The brownies (Rs. 80 a piece) are ooey gooey pieces of paradise. I want to marry these brownies, honeymoon in Venice with them and raise children named after Bob Dylan songs ('Corinna Corinna', 'To Ramona', 'Farewell Angeline', etc) with them. These brownies would treat me RIGHT. While most brownies are more sugar than cocoa, these were rich and chocolatey – I'm assuming they used dark chocolate in them rather than milk. I like my brownies very slightly bitter (to balance out the sugar), and these definitely delivered. They've also got chunks of cashew in them, for a lil something extra, although the bottom of the brownie was slightly gooey and uncooked, which was disappointing. Other than that, grab a corner piece (or 4) and settle down with a 2000s rom-com – you're all set.

The strawberry tarts (Rs. 80 a piece) are, unfortunately, quite basic. They consisted of a tart base filled with whipped cream and topped with strawberry slices in a pretty flower design. While it gets points for presentation, the tart was quite unexceptional in all other aspects. The base was decent, but the ratio of cream to base was slightly off – it was quite dry, so a bit more cream might've balanced it out. The only strawberry flavour comes from the sliced strawberry on top of the art. If you're looking for a very basic strawberry tart – although I don't know why you would be – this is the one.

Service

The Savoury Monkey usually takes orders roughly three days in advance, although we needed ours in two and they were able to accommodate us. They were only offering the brownies and tarts that week – ironic for a place with 'savoury' in their name – so we didn't have as many options as we would've liked.

They weren't offering delivery on the day we ordered either, so we had to pick up the goods from Sri Jayawardenapura, where they're based. They initially gave us the wrong address, however, which was frustrating since driving around Colombo at lunchtime on a weekday is not ideal. When we got to the house, the owners were out and hadn't left any change behind. They initially directed us to various shops down their lane to get change, which was both exhausting and unprofessional, but later gave us their bank details to deposit the money instead. I do appreciate them doing this, though, as they didn't have a guarantee that I wouldn't hook off with the desserts, never to be heard from again.

The Savoury Monkey is – so far as we've seen – pretty 50/50. The brownies are great, but the variety was disappointing, as was the service. The value for money is good, but again this is in relation to the only 2 desserts that were on offer. Maybe it's just finding its feet though, and hopefully in future will be able to offer more variety as well as a delivery option.