Located at: Ground Floor, K-zone Ja-ela, 525 Negombo Road, Ja-ela, Sri Lanka

Visited on: 05 Nov, 2017

Such a great find! I didn’t see this coming, to be honest, but this is about as authentic as pizza is going to get for a locally-owned restaurant. And it’s all the way out here in Ja-ela – double thumbs up! Having seen the advertorial banner at K-zone Ja-ela, we were curious to try this place out- soon. So we got some take away dinner that night itself. And I can tell you this –  we’ll definitely be going back for more.

Thin. That’s what this pizza is. So thin. Which equals to little dough, which in turn equals to minimal carbs. Which is fabulous. In fact, it’s so thin that it can barely hold itself together when paired with the moisture of tomatoes – it gets a little soggy and begins to fall apart (perhaps something they could make note of and work out a bit). Still, thin is how we like it. Delicious. That’s what else it is. We tried out two types.

The Margherita Con Chips & Sausages (LKR 1,700 for Large 16.5”) caught my eye simply because it had fries on it. I don’t recall having seen a pizza with fries before, and so thought it might be interesting to check out. It was. I was more or less expecting a very fast food-y taste, dominated by the fries. Yes, you could taste the fries well enough. But no, it wasn’t overly dominant. And that was because the slices of chicken sausage were large enough not to let the fries overwhelm their presence. This was complemented well by a substantial layer of mozzarella and the usual tomato purée and other condiments. Good job.

They didn’t have the Frutti di Mare (seafood) – our second choice – that day, but offered us the Seafood Special (LKR 2,100 for Medium 13”) instead. The description claimed that it had jumbo prawns, lobster, crab and baby squid. We nodded. The prawns weren’t all that ‘jumbo’, to be fair, but what we saw when we opened the box delighted us. The first thing you notice is the piece of lobster sitting on one side of the pizza. This was going to be our taste test. We broke into the meat and found that it was well-cooked and wasn’t bland, to say the least. The lobster meat had flavour. Attention to detail – check. Good start. On to the rest of the pizza, it was crunchy with all that baby squid and the tomato and cilantro complemented the seafood so well. The crab meat might have been a tad bit overcooked, as it had more of a fishy texture to it. And as I mentioned before, the tomato was a bit much for the super-thin dough to hold, so serving and eating were both messy tasks. But we didn’t complain because the taste made up for it. Very satisfying. I only wish they’d have shared some of the oregano I saw atop the counter with their take-away clients too. Just saying!

There are plenty more toppings to choose from at Romana, and they do pastas, lasagne and risotti as well. Definitely looking forward to trying more of these. The place is done up nicely too – pleasing to the eye. So if you’re passing by or live around the area, do try them out. A bit of a gem away from the popularity and hustle of Colombo, in my opinion. And reminiscent of Wijaya Beach, Unawatuna – those of you who’ve been there will know what I mean. I sure hope they keep it up.

Yummy Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

>> Read Part 02 of The Eat Log’s review on Romana @ https://theeatlog.wordpress.com/2017/11/09/romana-pizza-ristorante-k-zone-ja-ela-part-02/