The Gallery Café A Lankan Masterpiece

Rashmi Uday Singh’s Good Food Guide

Quite simply, it’s the best in Sri Lanka. It exudes a timeless magic and serves up sublime food, even the music here keeps up with the time of day-light jazz for lunch, blues for dinner. It can look like Sorrento in spring, San Tropez in summer and Costa del Sol on a good day. Have I got you all revved up and kick-started to go zooming off to the teardrop of an island on the Indian ocean? Do so, and head to ‘The Gallery Café’ located in an elegant tree-lined area of Colombo. Walk past paintings and into an open sided dining pavilion and an alfresco dining area. Rough ochre walls, giant cement urns, wrought iron furniture all fuse to create a memorable elegance.

Ambience is not all, The Gallery Café serves up a unique gastronomical experience, the menu is eclectic and changes every three months. I loved the freshness of the ingredients – be it the seafood or the crisp lettuce leaf – and the wizardry and creativeness of the dishes. I have to begin with the end, the desserts. Absolutely celestial. Possibly the best crème brulee this side of the Suez canal. Even something as unlikely as a pumpkin cheesecake served with vanilla ice-cream is a masterpiece. Iced chocolate bombe, superlative carrot cake, sinful gooey chocolate cake, and the out-of-the-world tangy lemon meringue pie.

Opt for the perennial favourites like the baked crab, the lemongrass and ginger chicken, vegetable lasagne and the gotukola soup made from a local vegetable known to increase your memory and which is healthy too.

While the food is outstanding, the owner is intriguing. A die-hard devotee of art, style and aesthetics, Shanth Fernando refuses to compromise on quality, charms me off my feet but refuses to let me photograph him.

FOODLINE

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