154, Kynsey Road, Colombo 08.
Open 11 AM–11 PM
A chilled out place in the heart of Colombo for a nibble and drink after work with friends, which doesn't require you to dress up or shell out serious dough.
Mintage has been around for little over two years now, and has since become a popular watering hole among Colombo's working crowd. We like Mintage — they serve up some pretty good Sri Lankan Chinese along with cheap booze. That's a classic combo.
These days Mintage is known mostly for its bar, but their restaurant serves up some classic Sri Lankan Chinese dishes, and they do it quite well for the most part. Their menu is on par with most other contemporary Sri Lankan Chinese restaurants in terms of variety. Most of it is priced very reasonably, so if you're not drinking too much, you can manage at Rs. 1,000 per head.
It's pretty straight forward as far as booze goes 'cause Mintage doesn't offer any cocktails. You can simply grab your alcohol of choice along with some chasers and make a night of it. The good thing, however, is that the booze is quite cheap so you can grab a bottle of Old Arrack for around Rs. 1,600. The no cocktails part is a bit of a bummer, but Mintage still remains one of the most affordable taverns in Colombo.
Getting back to the food, we started out with some onion rings (Rs. 399), which weren't too shabby at all. We got a pretty decent portion considering the price. It was on point in terms of texture and flavour, with a crispy golden-brown batter that was well-seasoned and not too thick.
Their yang chow fried rice (Rs. 889 for a large portion) was okay. It's basically a mixed fried rice with nothing to really set it apart from the usual fare. On a positive note, it did have quite a bit of meat in there so I wouldn't say we were unhappy.
Their stir fried belly pork (Rs. 730 for a large) was a pleasant surprise with plenty of flavour. Though it was a stir fry,the dish itself had quite a thick consistency due to the sauce as opposed to the oilier preparations you find elsewhere, with the flavour of soy and oyster sauce coming through distinctly. The pork itself was cooked well, cut into relatively thin slices with a good portion of fat. It was definitely on the saltier end of the spectrum, but it was balanced out by the less intensely seasoned rice.
The best of the dishes we tried, however, was their HBC (Rs. 889 for a large). As classic as it gets in terms of preparation, it featured a crisp, well-seasoned batter, spring onions and dried chillies. We find a lot of new places tend to put a spin on the HBC recipe to make it their own. While that adds more variety, we always appreciate a classic HBC, which is exactly what Mintage's version was.
The atmosphere at Mintage is pretty simple and casual with the restaurant on the ground floor and the bar upstairs. The bar area is considerably smaller than the restaurant but they've managed to make the most of the space with a few enclosed booths that small groups can reserve.
On the day Friday we dropped in, however, the bar was filled to capacty, which made it quite claustrophobic. They were cool with us having our drinks in the restaurant area along with our dinner.
Service was actually quite fast, with the food arriving in 15 minutes or thereabouts. That's quite impressive considering the crowds. The waiters were friendly and casual, although their attentiveness understandably dipped when the numbers increased.
It's pretty tough to find restaurants or bars in Colombo that strike a balance between pleasant ambience, fast service and affordability. But Mintage offers just that, along with cheap booze and tasty Sri Lankanized Chinese fare.
Mintage has been around for little over two years now, and has since become a popular watering hole among Colombo's working crowd. We like Mintage — they serve up some pretty good Sri Lankan Chinese along with cheap booze.
A nice, chill place for a nibble and drink after work with friends, and doesn't require you to dress up or shell out.
සිංහල ඔයත් කෑම ගන්න ගමන් ඉඳලා හිටලා ෂොට් එකක් දාන්න කැමති කෙනෙක්ද? එහෙනම් මින්ටේජ් එක තමයි ඔයාට හරි යන පොට් එක. දවස පුරා ම සැර බීම ජාති හරි අඩු මිලකට මෙතැනින් ගන්න පුළුවන්. කෑමවලට වුණත් මේකේ යන වියදම සෑහෙන්න සාධාරණයි. ඒ නිසා බඩ කට පුරවගන්න පුළුවන් හිතේ හැටියට.
Address
Directions
Mintage is at the very beginning of Kynsey Road when you turn in from the Borella Junction.
Contacts
Report InaccuracyOpen 11 AM–11 PM
Cuisine
Price Range
Dish Types
Fried Rice Beef Pork Chicken Cuttlefish Beer Wine Spirits Bites
Ratings Breakdown
Cheap, yet not-so-dodgy place to sip a beer while staring…
HQ is one of the best places in Kandy to pop in…
1/5
Came here for 31st office dinner. The ambiance was ok and the service was disappointing. The water was not served to everyone and also when asked about the dishes, the waiter didn’t know anything but still said something and when I ordered, it was completely different from what the waiter said.
Awesome place to hangout with friends, family or with your loved ones, reasonable prices, and good customer service,
Love the food… Great place to hang out after work…. Booked the VIP lounge for a birthday and it was great…. Service was good… Food was great prices are superb
we just tried it last night it was good the food was really good and the place looks very nice will deff… go again
It is always very pleasant to dine at Mintage…Fine Taste…Cozy Ambiance…Excellent Service…going back there became just a habit…Keep it up… … …
We had our office party at there VIP Lounge .The waiters are fast and friendly food is good and drinks are not overpriced.This place is officially our after work pub.
Place is great…Love the space they have made…
Highly recommend their VIP loge for private parties…
Today's bill for 1 person earlier today (17th Oct 2014)
Hot Butter Mushrooms - Rs.429
Beef with Chilli Garlic Sauce (S) - Rs.459
300ml of VAT 9 - Rs.900
Water Bottle Small (500ml) - Rs.80
Total - Rs.1,868
Tax - Rs.410.96
Total - Rs.2,278.96
almost went 10 times in last 3 months, great place for food, drinks with great service. Tom-yum is the favorite among all the cuisines in Mintage.
They have some lovely cocktails i tried the strawberry Mojito yummm . They seem to be getting in a good crowd …Food is really good and staff is friendly So thumbs up Keep it up
went recently…bad place…full of cigerette smoke…we dine in ground floor.it has signs "no smoking".but people next to our table were smoking and management work like they haven't seen it.we weren't happy with that smoky enviornment…i guess u cn hv a smoke in 1st floor…bt in ground floor…Nooo…it ruined the enjoyment of their food(which is not bad in my opinion)
and also 1st floor not seperated with a door, which cause cigerette smoke flow all around… and hv poor ventilation…
In my recommendation this is a bad place for a family dinner or people who hate smoking(esp.when u want to enjoy ur food)
The pub area needs more space, maybe they should make the entire establishment a pub. p.s. The wooden chairs in the pub are VERY uncomfortable.
Went on a Friday and the place was packed. cigarette smoke is a problem as it seem to be everywhere including what was indicated as smoke free zones. Onion rings weren't as crispy as I've seen elsewhere but the HBC was pretty good. Seafood Mongolian had too much sauce and tasted a wee bit salty for my taste. They do a fantastic prawn paste toast bites and highly recommend tgat as an apitizer.
Trust me when I say this place sucks… I used to be a regular but(once a week) I can say their service is crap and the portions are getting smaller and smaller and the management sucks….and it's not cheap at all so might as well go to a place like steamboat instead not value for money
The Place is not good as it says. If your a NON SMOKER "NEVER BE THERE", the place has very poor ventilation, they let U Smoke in an AC room, it feels very hard to breath. The Food was not bad but prices are bit High.
Nice place. However, whoever set it up has no idea about ventilation and air conditioning in a restaurant environment.
The upstairs is supposed to have a limited smoking area, however, the entire restaurant is full of cigarette smoke because there is absolutely no exhaust mechanism and the smoking area is not completely restricted from the rest of the restaurant. There is a tiny smoke filter placed next to the bar which is as good as useless. Further, the kitchen is not fully sealed off so in reality it means all the smoke particles are being pulled through the kitchen exhausts (hence the reason the whole place smells) and is being deposited on the food, etc.
Other than that, the food is pretty good and the drinks prices are super. Needs more comfortable seating (ditch the narrow wooden stools) and upgrade that portion. I think you guys should shut the place down for about 2 weeks, have your ventilation sorted out by a proper engineer (by the way, you guys must be wasting a lot of electricity by running those under-sized ACs at 18C :)) and then go big. All the best!
1/5
NalinaSelvanathan
Came here for 31st office dinner. The ambiance was ok and the service was disappointing. The water was not served to everyone and also when asked about the dishes, the waiter didn’t know anything but still said something and when I ordered, it was completely different from what the waiter said.
4/5
ykoza
Rated 4/5
4/5
Rookie
Place was excellent. We watched the match between Germany & USA and the service we got from the staff was splendid. I would say the best food in the town without any hesitations. The only problem was the tax that we had to pay for our bill which was around 20% of the total bill.