Located at: 53 Ananda Coomaraswamy Mawatha, Colombo 03, Sri Lanka

Visited on: 14 Oct, 2018

Their new flagship restaurant on Ananda Coomaraswamy Mawatha is modernly eye-catching and stood out noticeably against the dim late evening. We were contemplating a snack and ended up stopping for an early dinner. At Isso, you can either make your own combo comprising a seafood base (step 1) prepared in a style of your choice (step 2) with a carb combo (step 3), or you can just opt for one of their ready-made specials. We (lazily) went with the latter option.

The first of the two dishes we ordered was a Fish and Chips (LKR 1,490). This turned out to be a crisp, finely crumbed portion of fish that was nice and moist on the inside with tartare sauce and a rather (overly?) generous serving of sweet potato chips. Now, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel ‘chips’ experience, however the proportion of chips to fish was quite lop-sided. Which is a shame, as the fish was nicely prepared and – with a few drops of lemon juice and/or tartare – was quite delicious. The tartare sauce was a great, complementing accompaniment to both the fish and the chips. But there really is only so much chips that one can eat – even when shared (or so I think!). So perhaps a more balanced ratio of fish and chips would do this dish well. Also, when looking at the next dish in terms of value for money, one might raise an eyebrow as to how a (comparatively) mere hundred bucks can make such a difference to the ‘richness’ of the dish. Food for thought.

The Italian Job – prawns with pesto, cream, tomato, cashew nuts, cheese, garlic, penne pasta (LKR 1,590) was nicely prepared – albeit some (other than myself of course!) may express a bit of concern over portion size. There was evidence of neither pesto (visually, at least), nor cashew nuts. Although you can’t complain about the mix that it was as it was. With about ten or more fairly large, crunchy prawns and a tomato-heavy sauce with a tinge of sweetness and that extra cheese on top – in addition to the thick-ish cream/cheese that the ingredients had been tossed in – this was every bit your heart-warming comfort food. In fact, the sauce went pretty well with the sweet potato chips from the other dish as well. Yet the missing elements were indeed missing and that was a slight pity. Nonetheless, I might just give this place another shot sometime in the future.

Yummy Rating: 3.5 / 5.0