By Kaveesha Siriwardena
Alhambra, the star restaurant in Ramada by Wyndham personifying a north-Indian cuisine offers an authentic and diverse dinner buffet. The restaurant rounds up two dining halls, a wide outside open dining experience as well as a bar lounge. There are no restrictions to where you choose to dine from all three dining areas leaving the bar lounge for its purpose.
The dinner buffet called the “Moghul Dinner Buffet” operates every Friday from 7 – 11 pm priced at LKR 3,200 per person. Due to its authentic set of north-Indian cuisine, Alhambra tends to get quite packed seasonally therefore, we recommend getting there early or booking reservations.
Covid-19 preventionary measures
Covid measures consist of wearing plastic gloves (provided) when handling any food chafing dish handles and all dining halls accommodating only 40% of its usual crowd. Due to the difficulties experienced with sneeze guards over the chafing dishes in a buffet it has been excluded out of mandatory measures. People also tend to forget and flock around although a pandemic, with the managing staff not really voicing out to follow covid-distancing protocols unless the customers themselves abide by it.
Ambiance
Hotel Ramada by Wyndham itself exudes an excellent, elegant and calm setting even on a busy Friday night.
Entering Alhambra the star north-Indian restaurant at Ramada immediately transports you to its domain with its authentic atmosphere, soothing music and lightly Christmassy Knick knacks used to decorate the areas. The staff was very polite, helpful and attentive. They ensured that the environment was comfortable to all.
We really loved the options of places to dine at, the main Alhambra dining hall would have you admiring its interior works and soothing, bubbling music.
While the second dining area offered an entirely different atmosphere leaning towards a more chilled restaurant ambiance. And the open-dining area was set near the outside pools letting anyone experience the fresh, chilled night breeze while enjoying your food and time.
The Dinner Buffet
While the main course of the buffet does greatly satisfy one’s craving the starters seemed to be lacking variety and leaning more towards the side of a salad platter as opposed to the many delicious north-Indian appetizers that are well known around for. But we do recommend the Pav Bhaji and tandoori chicken as they were an excellent find to start off a course of meals.
The Mains
The main course consisted of a good variety and authenticity, ranging from chicken, mutton and seafood to vegetarian options. The mutton biriyani and Kadai paneer is highly recommended and goes well paired with the tandoori chicken. Many north-Indian inspired curries were available to pick from as per one’s palette and were all greatly flavored up to satisfactory.
Overall, the main course buffet will have you going back for seconds with its variety of rice and naan dishes and multiple choice of curries to pair and try out. We would say that there is not much to worry about the spicy factor as everything we tried was very well balanced in terms of spiced and peppered departments, and if you do prefer spicy, hot foods a good topping of the provided sauces would help.
The Desserts
Moving onto the desserts section, I would say a pretty good standard of variety and taste was achieved. The desserts ranged from Indian delicacies, western chocolate delicacies to fresh fruits.
If you are a fan of sago desserts, I do recommend trying the sago pudding dessert which is a light, warm, spiced sago dessert, it simply melts in your mouth and for someone that had never tried it before was very pleasing and light to have after a heavy main course.
We grade the chocolate mousse a hearty-comfort-food and cravings-satisfied kind of mousse, it was very finely balanced and will have you restraining yourself to go back for more. Overall, I recommend the sago pudding, chocolate mousse and chocolate tarts.
Plus of course, I should also mention, if you are craving a wealth of gulab jamun you’ve come to the right place.
Conclusion
The dinner buffet called the “Moghul Dinner Buffet” operates every Friday from 7 – 11pm priced at LKR 3,200 per person. This buffet would definitely be more appreciated if the starters section was a bit more enriched of its north-Indian cuisine. Based off my knowledge, I believe that everyone would love diving in and starting off with a good round of appetizers for the price being paid as it is literally what provides the consumer first impressions of the restaurant. We do hope they renew and follow covid restrictions a bit more seriously as many smarter alternatives to sneeze-guards can be put in place. Most of the dishes in the main course played the star roles of the buffet as they represented the north-Indian cuisine upto a satisfactory standard. Followed by a range of decent desserts, however not any adventurously great options for the price paid. A lot of room for improvement and more vigilance on what’s more important and hygiene is what we conclude this review with.
Christmas Buffet
Ramada is ready to serve you a series of delicious buffet options this Christmas season! Christmas Eve dinner buffet on 24th December 2021 priced at LKR 5,500 per person. Festive high tea on 24th, 25th and 26th December 2021 priced at LKR 2,900 per person. Christmas Day brunch buffet on 25th December 2021 priced at LKR 5,000 per person. Christmas Day dinner buffet on 25th December priced at LKR 4,500 per person
Contact Number: 0112 422 001
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Or visit their website for more information.
