The Hammock Cafe in the Galle Dutch Hospital has a great location and cool seating, but the food is pretty expensive and mediocre.
The Ambience
We don’t usually lead with ambience, but this place is called Hammock. True to the name, all the seating is in hammocks, but not the reclining kind. These are hammock chairs, which are actually quite comfortable. They’re attached to the lofted roof and you can swing in them a little bit, the tables are relatively fixed and you knock your knees pretty fast. We do think the hammock seating was pretty cool.
They also have bongos and a lofted space upstairs. It’s in the Galle Dutch Hospital so the location is generally nice. There are front and back balconies as well, both with seating.
It’s a nice location and theme.
The Food
The devilled chicken. Mostly tomatoesThe food, however, was a let down. They take Sri Lankan classics like devilled chicken and fried rice and… make them worse. And much more expensive. Our devilled chicken (Rs. 800), well, you can see in the picture. You can’t really spot any chicken. In the end we found about eight pieces total in there. At about Rs. 100 per piece of overcooked chicken, it made us very sad. The dish just looked stingy, more tomatoes and capsicum than actual devilled chicken. The chicken itself also wasn’t very good, just like ketchup and chili and salt.
Seafood fried riceWe tried a seafood fried rice (Rs. 900) and, again, it was just overpriced and unimpressive. Rs. 900 is a lot of rice, and this didn’t even have hefty bits of seafood to make up for it.
The drinks we had were nice. This Amaretto Rose (Rs. 800) was tasty, though not cheap.
Overall we can’t recommend the food here, though we hope it changes. It’s classic Sri Lankan bites, but done badly and costing more.
The Service
The people here are nice, though the entire staff did disappear around cheque time.
Conclusion
Great location and interesting concept, but just too expensive for mediocre food. All right place for drinks.
