Kotahena is a mix of many things. But, unfortunately (to the extent I know) they aren't necessarily known for their fancy restaurants to get food at. Primarily consisting of short eats and such, Green Life Vegetarian stands out of the Colombo 13 norm like a Spongebob costume at a funeral.
We dropped in for a First Look.
Ambience
The restaurant is found in a corner of a rather deserted part of the town and at first glance, appears to be nothing more than yet another roadside joint to get your wadey on. That is until you get to the real restaurant part of it of course.
Plastic trees to make it look like you've gone into some Korean-psychedelic music video, the ambience at Green Life Vegetarian turned out to be a rather impressive surprise to us. Clean, comfortable seating with enough of a capacity to fit at least 50 people at once, the space was essentially a mix between things restaurant like and cafe.
Food
The menu at Green Life Vegetarian isn't particularly large. Featuring things both South and North Indian, the food at Green Life Vegetarian seemed to encompass most of the restaurant favourites, just in a very vegetarian way with most of the meaty supplements taking the form of either potatoes or paneer.
This was their Paper Masala Dosai (Rs. 350). The dosai boosted lots of flavours to get things going. With hints of ghee coming through, it leant more towards the slightly soggy side of things and wasn't all that hot. But, it's big enough for one to get a pretty wholesome meal of.
A spicy potato filling to pull it all off, the dosai was served with some delicious dhal curry and curries accompanying it.
Clocking in at Rs. 325, the Veg Biryani turned out to be a pretty generous amount of sunny, almost golden basmati cooked in an array of spices and veggies. The rice included a whole heap of veggies in it including lots of carrots and cauliflower in the mix. However, the rice rang as something that leant more along with things sweet unlike most generic biryani we're used to.
The raita pretty much followed suit. It had bits like the addition of crushed green chillies to give it an additional kick.
We also happened to get the Aloo Butter Masala (Rs. 520). If you're someone who likes a bit more than a tinge of sweetness in your curries, you would absolutely love this one. With a moderate amount of spice, most of the sweetness coming through the added carrots, the aloo bonda was served as a generous helping of curry but just wasn't our cup of tea.
Drinks
After trying multiple times to get a drink (they were out of a lot of the items on the menu), we finally settled for the following.
The Tea (Rs. 80) was all right. Milkier than we would have liked, but good nonetheless, the tea was sweet and all in all a good way to end the meal. A bit more kahata would have been appreciated.
Coming in at Rs. 220, the Fresh Apple Juice came in as a murky brown concoction that was a tad too sweet. However, if you're big on considerably sweet apple juice, we suggest going with this.
Service
The staff said that it takes only 10 minutes to ready our food and they managed to deliver within the time frame. However, the didn't seem all that sure about the menu as they kept having to travel back and forth from our table to the kitchen to see if some of the things were there. Apart from that, they were all right.
Conclusion
If you're looking for a decent place to get a good vegetarian meal in this area, you should definitely check them out. This is only the First Look, and we're planning to drop by for a full review soon, so stay tuned.
