Shawarmaz @ GP is a new restaurant in Wellawatte, specialised in Middle Eastern fare. This place might look inconspicuous but holy moly if their food wasn’t delicious!
Ambience
Unfortunately, I forgot (apologies) to take pictures of the ambience [Ed Note: take pictures], because I was too busy enjoying all the food. Anyway, let me elaborate.
The restaurant itself is inside a giant hotel type building with a weird laboratory/hospital vibe. It’s only because they use white light instead of warm lighting but combined with the air conditioning and the lack of windows, it’s pretty unnerving.
Nevertheless, they do have a really colourful wall on one side which gives major FIFA 2014 vibes and is pretty cool, but, the lighting kind of kills it. Apart from that, they have a bunch of wedding-type chairs and tables, perfectly enough to seat at least 20 people. But, with the capacity they’ve got, there is so much that they can do to make this place more vibrant.
Food
From Shawarmas to burgers to rice bases to hummus, they’ve managed to cover quite a few varieties. We started with their Hummus with Chicken (Rs. 480) and followed it with a Special Chicken Shawarma (Rs. 600) and a Mexicana Chicken (Rs. 600).
Let me start with the hummus. Wow! Drenched with a thick layer of silky smooth olive oil and a few tiny pieces of perfectly marinated Chicken, the Hummus with Chicken was brilliant! They serve 4 pieces of roti which were barely enough to cover half of the bowl but, trust us on this, it won’t stop you from trying it. Even if you don’t like the hummus, we guarantee that you’ll feel differently after this.
The Special Chicken Shawarma was pretty damn good too. Overflowing with tiny pieces of really well-seasoned chicken lavished with thinly cut veggies, this was one of the best shawarmas I’ve had. Everything was neatly rolled into a warm pocket of pita bread with a slight crunch to it.
The Mexicana Chicken was a bit confusing. On your first bite, if you do bite the right end, you just might end up with a red face and tears streaming down your face. The other side contains chicken, and it was a lot milder, in comparison to the other half. Either way, if you’re one of those people that look for a bit more spice than those of us who appreciate our taste buds, we suggest going with this.
Service
If there’s one thing that we may have liked more than our food, it’s the service. They were super nice when they came to take our orders. Extremely friendly, helpful and quick on their feet, they made us feel welcome.
Apart from that, they didn’t give us judgemental looks once during our meal, which is a really good thing if you’re going with your friends if your friends are an embarrassment to the world like I am.
Overall
Overall, we really liked this place. While a few tweaks could be done to the ambience to make it better, our experience here went down quite well, and we can’t wait to go back again.