Located down Cross Road in Mount Lavinia, Club 7E Family Resturant is a residential space, flipped to take the outlook of a cosy dining spot. They are a relatively new player to the area, hosting East Asian, and Sri Lankanised Chinese fare along with a bar which is open only during the evening.
Food & Drinks
Their menu is a handy book with a few decorative pictures of the food they serve alongside a list of pages sporting, soups, starters, rice and noodle-centred dishes. They have chicken, beef and seafood dishes with various spins on them as the choices of protein, and there're juices and milkshakes in the beverages section.
We started off with the Chicken Spring Roll (Rs. 508) which was four plumpy rolls cut in half. Biting into the roll, it was crunchy on the outer layer while packing a creamy, potato and chicken mix with bits of carrots here and there. It was a light starter but the musty aroma it produced was a bit off-putting.
Since it's their speciality, we went with Club 7E Special Thai Style Fried Rice (Rs. 798 for S). The rice itself was a tad oily but seasoned well, had carrot, leeks, onions all adding the texture. There were tiny bits of shrimp hidden in the mix, as well as chewy pieces of cuttlefish to support the seafood counterpart of it. We didn’t see much of Thai flavour here, but this can work as a decent dish of fried rice nevertheless.
My lunch partner picked the Deep-Fried Fish Fillet In Orange Sauce (Rs. 678) but she was not impressed by it. It was presented nicely on a bed of lettuce leaves. A heap of batter-fried fish, bathing in a sauce, but the flavours left a lot to be desired. The sauce did all the hard work in terms of flavours, and everything was averagely sweet and spicy nothing more.
While the batter was not too thick, it was doused in the sauce, had a bit of creaminess from the fish and we didn’t get much of orange/ citrusy notes anywhere as we expected.
Fried Chicken With Hot Garlic Chilli Sauce (Rs. 608) was another curveball of a plate. There was plenty of diced chicken which was sauteed, a tad firm and moist inside, but had soused up all the flavour from the sauce. The sauce itself was quite gingery, not garlicky as we expected and even though we could literally see garlic pieces, the flavour of it was more or less missing. It was quite spicy and had a bit of a sweet note underneath but almost overwhelmingly ginger-like.
While they do serve cocktails and liquor in the bar, it's only open in the evening. So we went with an Oreo Blast (Rs. 560) and a Bully Bullfrog (Rs. 700) mocktail for our drinks.
Oreo Blast on left, Bullfrog on right
The Oreo Blast was actually a bold chocolate blast with a layer of crumbled Oreo biscuit floating on top of the glass. We missed not having much of oreo flavour in the mix, but given how thick and chocolaty the milkshake was, we enjoyed it.
The Bullfrog was an eye-catching tall glass decorated with a lime wedge and made with strawberry syrup, Redbull and coke. Mixing the layers up, it ended up being quite refreshing with the fizz and the flavour from the RedBull and strawberry helped to make it interesting.
Ambience & Service
The place is quite spacious and can hold upwards of thirty or so people in their outside and inside dining areas combined. Since it was a house flipped into a resto, you get quite a bit of chilled-out vibe here to enjoy your meals in peace.
The lady who waited on us was polite and pleasant and we didn't have to wait a lot for the food. They have BYOB with a corkage fee that is subject to change with local and imported liquor.
Conclusion
CLUB 7E landed on the pricier side of things, especially with the taxes and service charges (15% and 10% respectively). They have room to improve when it comes to flavour and making sure how the main flavours are not drowned out. Making things less oily can help too. However, the place is quite relaxing, but we wouldn't totally recommend them for you to try out, unless you're in the area.
