A go-to spot for easy biryani, Kandoori dishes up some decent food — at least in Colombo. We dropped into their branch in Beruwala while passing by and were severely disappointed by the food and service (or lack of thereof).
Service and Ambience
The place was pretty crowded when we walked in, mostly full of Arab and Indian tourists. It was incredibly noisy, pretty dirty, and the few waiters who were around had a tendency to disappear and not notice you. After multiple extended minutes of waving our arms about, we flagged the attention of the staff and placed our orders.
Food
We placed an order for a Vegetable Biryani (Rs. 420), Chicken Biryani (Rs. 480), and a Seafood Rice (Rs. 640). The wait for it was longer than the wait for a local highschool student's wait for their O/L or A/L results… we honestly thought they'd forgotten about us and our orders but it turned out that the veggie biryani was taking a while (like over half an hour sort of a while).
The food arrived in one go, and we dug in enthusiastically only to be saddened by it.
Except for the Malay Pickle (and a rather badly pickled pickle at that), the chicken biryani lacked accompanying condiments. There was no pineapple, dry maldive fish sambol, greenpeas curry or minchi. The chicken was passable, but rather cold— as was most of the rice.
The only difference between this and the veggie biryani was that they'd thrown in some chopped beans and a few greenpeas with the rice.
Absolutely charming. We were not impressed.
On the other hand, the seafood rice had plenty of fish, cuttlefish and bits of prawn.
It was also slathered in a somewhat edible over-cooked veggies: rather like what you'd get with a chop suey.
Compared to both the biryanis, this was the least disappointing meal and was actually well prepared. Somewhat strange given that Kandoori's forte is supposed to be their biryani.
Conclusion
It was late evening by the time we finally got our meals and scooted out of there, by which time most of the tourists had left as well. Despite being the only people there at a point, service was still intolerably inefficient, and the place was still a mess. Not really a restaurant we'd recommend given that there's nothing to recommend it for, unless you're super hungry.
