Located at: Park Road, Colombo 05, Sri Lanka

Visited on: 11 Oct, 2018

We made a lunch stop at Off the Hook since we were passing by. I was looking forward to having something Japanese off their menu. I had tried their Japanese pizza some time ago and remember being rather intrigued by the interesting combination of unconventional textures and flavours.

Today I picked something closer to home – Katsu Don (LKR 1,310). The first thing that struck me was that the dish came on a plate rather than in a bowl, which is essentially where it gets its name from (don is derived from donburi, which refers to rice bowl). Interestingly, this dish seemed to have both chicken and seafood as I came across what tasted like squid rings. Of course, I didn’t mind this – and later realised that the menu description states “panko crusted chicken or seafood…” (I wasn’t asked for a preference). It’s just that I was expecting the usual panko chicken dish. This was good though – quite the quantity, but I enjoyed it in terms of taste. There was more than a moderate serving of the sauce in the rice, making it nicely savoury and moist. The dish was a decent choice for my Japanese craving.

I can’t really say the same about the Nasi Goreng (LKR 680) though. Although the menu description referred to “chicken and prawn skewers” in plural, there was only a single skewer. Which was disappointing, as this – particularly the peanut sauce – was the best part of the dish. The “spicy rice” was not spicy and, I thought, lacked flavour. The prawn crackers looked too oily for comfort, so I refrained from trying them. The rice did have some chicken and seafood pieces, but they didn’t do much to elevate the dish from its mediocre state. Overall, it was pretty ordinary and definitely not up to our expectation.

Their Chocolate Milkshake (LKR 320) was quite nice, not too sweet and with a moderately rich but smooth consistency. The Orange Juice (LKR ) was fresh and well-balanced – a good choice for a warm afternoon.

Yummy Rating: 3.0 / 5.0