Sponge
347, Galle Road, Colombo 3
- Call 011 2 573321
-
Open 7.00AM to 7.30 PM, 8.00AM to 3.00PM on Sundays
Sponge is one of the oldest bakeries in the big city, and one of the biggest. They are still going strong with a quality range of savouries and sweets, and now also lamprais and gourmet sandwiches.
Sponge is one of the oldies where Colombo's bakeries are concerned. They go all the way back to 1985. Sponge is still among the best places in the city for affordable shorteats and sweets; they also do lamprais and some decent burgers and sandwiches, and have a cosy cafe space to chill out in.
The Food
This is my new favourite place for savouries. We tried the Chinese roll, maalu paan and chicken pies, and they were all top quality - delicious fresh fillings, generously stuffed, and costing about 70-120 bucks. They seem to have a wider range of short-eats available than at most places, with vegetarian options as well. If you love maalu paan as much as we do, this is one of the good places to try it out.
They also have a promising range of burgers and sandwiches available, so we gave the chicken burger a shot, not expecting much. This cost Rs. 240 and came in a cute size about the size of a maalu paan, with soft bread, simple dressing and cheese and a very nice thick, soft section of well ground meat - quite a good burger for a bakery.
We didn't try their range of cakes this time but they are usually known to be good. We did however sample the eclairs and chocolate biscuit pudding, as I am prone to try everywhere possible, and while they're not amazing like they are at Tasty Caterers (a strong contender), they're quite alright. Very icing-sugar sweet, and better than at most bakeries.
No, this Spiderman candle is not edible but it's very cool and we got it at Sponge for 80 bucks, because why not?
Service & Ambience
This is not your typical bakery. While the service is typical - you go to the glass counter, pick what you want, pay your bill and grab your snack - the ambience is much nicer than usual. The space directly in front of the glass displays features neat wooden furniture, spotless floors and an open view of the busy Galle Road outside.
What's so nice about Sponge is the front lobby as soon as you walk in. Plenty of very cushy sofas, throw pillows, and warm wooden paneling here to relax and unwind with some affordable snacks and drinks. Like Pagoda Tea Rooms has done, but even better. They seem to have upped their game since the old days, which is good to see.
Conclusion
We are yet to try the lamprais and rice dishes at Sponge, but these guys are legit when it comes to savouries and cakes. It's also a very accessible and comfy place to stop and refresh yourself on a hot day.
TIP
Sponge is one of the oldest bakeries in the big city, and one of the biggest. They are still going strong with a quality range of savouries and sweets, and now also lamprais and gourmet sandwiches.
Sponge stakes a pretty strong claim to being the best short-eat supplier in the city. Their selection of pastries, patties, rolls, cakes and other assorted finger-food is really impressive.
සිංහල එක පැත්තක කේක්, අනික් පැත්තෙ ෂෝටීට්ස්, ඉස්සරහ මේන් මීල්ස්, ඩ්රින්ක්ස්.. හපෙ හප්පෝ.. එතනම නතරවුනි! “මෙහ්, කොහෙද බං මේ මාව එක්කගෙන ආවෙ?” “හෑ.. ඒක තමයි මාත් මේ කල්පනා කලේ. කෑම බීම තියෙනව කිව්වට මෙහෙම කෑම බීම තියෙනව කියල...”
සිංහල හැමදාම දෙන රෝල්ස් පැටිස් වෙනුවට අලුත් විදියේ ෂෝට් ඊට්ස්, කේක් ජාති ගොඩක් ගන්න පුළුවන් තැනක් විදියට ස්පොන්ජ් එක හඳුන්වන්න පුළුවන්.
Address
Directions
Sponge is towards the Kollupitiya junction side of Galle Road, opposite Aloe Avenue, Makeen Books and Fab.
Contacts
Report InaccuracyOpen 7.00AM to 7.30 PM, 8.00AM to 3.00PM on Sundays
Price Range
Dish Types
Lamprais Rice And Curry Cakes Sandwiches
Ratings Breakdown
Silver Ray
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JohnBala
Their chocolate mouse cake has been very consistent, i've been having it since the early 90's, still has not changed in quality or taste. The passion fruit cake is also nice, Sponge is expensive compared to all the other places but you get good quality stuff which you cannot find elsewhere.
CookieMonster
They have a chicken burger for 210 Rs which taste really good.
Good cakes, probably better than Fab. Chocolate chip cake was delicious.
We drop in here on and off for a snack and a hot chocolate.
But to be frank, their service sucks. Only reason that drag me back to this place is the chicken bun.
Tania
I hate the customer service at sponge they are the worst! They keep the customer standing for hours just to say that they dont have the food item the customer wants. They don't have respect to talk to customers either . For so many days I visited sponge to pre order the lunch but they just dissatisfied me and many more customers
Anonymous
Just had a lunch ( Mongolian Rice) from Sponge. The presentation was excellent. But the taste was horrible, tasteless and felt very flat. Not worth the 460/= spent on the item.
Anonymous
The lunch Items ( Chicken, Vegetarian, Mongolian ) are the worst that I have ever tasted anywhere in my entire life, It's barely edible, I wondered how on earth could somebody cook something so tasteless? Literally, I couldn't taste any thing apart from the black pepper spiciness and the taste from the catch-up they used on Uncooked Vegetables. Indeed they were nicely presented on plastic containers, but simply tasteless. All three verity which I ordered ( Chicken, Vegetarian, Mongolian ) Had the same type/taste Rice, which was very dry & only thing which was different from each other were the topping that has used. I was Very disappointed. ( This comment is only referred on the lunch Items, )
rti
The chocolate mousse cake remains excellent, hope they maintain their standard since you can't quite find this anywhere else.
Impressed
Just tried their online service - sponge.lk and was unbelievably impressed. All the relevant information is on the website - cake variety, price, available sizes by cake, how many pieces it can be cut into, etc. You can add to cart, specify a delivery date/time window and pay online. Simple as that. The cakes arrived on time, and the order was correct. They only charge Rs350 for delivery to Colombo 2! This delivery service is perfect for people ordering large cakes or volumes of cake for offices - saves us the time and hassle! Very impressed with sponge.lk. My only complaint would be that they don't have a place to put in any comments for the order (E.g. pls cut cake into 40pcs) when you use the online ordering system :( Other than that-awesome service!
Cake_Enthusiast
I am very disappointed with the services offered by Sponge - overall:
#1. You can not order a cake off the website for the same date as when the order was placed.
#2. The delivery guy DID NOT KNOW how to operate the EDC machine he was given to collect payments for orders to be paid with a credit card. He kept asking me why the machine was not working and when I requested him to call the company and ask he didn't seem too bothered, until I had to call them up myself. This lead to the company requesting me to hold the line while they could get to the bottom of this error. While I was on hold TO MAKE MATTERS WORST the delivery guy asked us to hold on to the EDC machine whilst he took off on another delivery expecting me to fix the matter myself.
#3 All in all I manged to get the machine working by restarting it (I had requested him to do this earlier on and he did not know how to restart the machine either) and manged to make the payment. He came back with my order and without even checking the receipt he took off not bothered to say thank you for fixing the problem.
Overall I was VERY DISAPPOINTED with this experience and it will be good to note this complaint (I have made it here since the website has not featured a functionality to make a written complaint) and educate the delivery guys on how to deal and fix problems like this without behaving disgracefully as the behavior I faced today.
AJ
Their hot chocolate was awful and not worth for Rs 350. It was not hot and felt kind of watery.
KIKI
just horrible stuff and the cakes are so dry and not worth the price.The cappuchino for Rs.360 was like water and the pastries are nothing to mention about while the set lunches are the worst in town
it used to be somewhat good but has become horrible compared to many of the home bakers and places like the Cakery and Mtsi
Cheesecake101
OMG worse ever service!!! OVER THE PHONE
Placed an order and the woman took it down and when I asked for the reference number and the total, she put me on hold for a very long time (same message repeated in my ear over and over again - sick!) I hung - up, called again and she did the same, this happened 4 times with the same woman. She's highly unprofessional and cannot handle customers. I had to re repeat my order and the contact number, when I asked her to give the phone to someone else who's capable, she just said can't and kept me on hold for along time until i hung-up.
Sponge used to a very professional and very reliable and i used their services for all my little events but today was just shocking!
Even though their food pricing is crazy high, i used to buy from them just because of the service!!
D
Sponge has decent quality but has become incredibly expensive! I bought about five small short eats and the bill came to 1200!!! Fab has a better price and better taste. Won't be going there again
5/5
BaileyDar
I love this place. I wish they had bigger portions of food though. Once I had a birthday party here and they served yummy short eats. This place will always be one of my fav spots because this is where I came to, on my very first date 4 years ago, after lectures :p
5/5
Elltino
i love the food. their lunch is great, service is good.