Located at: 316 Ethul Kotte Road, Battaramulla, Sri Lanka

Visited on: 15 Jul, 2023

Price                   : LKR 4,900 for adults, LKR 2,800 for children between 5-10 years

Availability         : Weekends and poya days 15:00 – 18:00

The high tea buffet at Waters Edge has come up in conversations with friends more than a couple of times. So, we thought of giving it a shot to see what all the fuss was about.

The buffet is laid out on the second floor, outside Kobe by the Edge, with seating arranged by the bar and in a small conference room opposite Kobe (mostly for larger groups). The seating at the bar was certainly not the most comfortable, with a small-ish low stool for a table (naturally more suitable for the bar service) and a small, low chair squeezed into the narrow walking path as a third to the two large cushioned chairs on either side of the stool.

The spread itself looked quite attractive with a substantial range of savouries and sweets, plus options of iced coffee, iced tea and hot black/milk/green tea. Some of the labels for the food were absent or mixed up, so we weren’t entirely sure of what all the dishes were, but tried out as much as we could.

The savoury items that we tried initially were quite good. I particularly enjoyed the sushi, as well as the roast chicken and chilli tuna sandwiches that I tried. The open-faced cream cheese and strawberry, and seafood sandwiches were nice, too.

Serving ourselves the next round of savouries turned out to be quite the task, though, for the place was packed with people and we had to squeeze into the queues and do our best not to get jostled around or spill any food on our clothes. Definitely not the most pleasant experience.

There were quite a lot of fried food items among the second half of the savouries. Out of these, the crumbed chicken skewer and fried fish were nice with the tartare sauce, but the latter was a bit oily. The mini seafood casserole was not bad, either, but the rest of the items that we tried were just okay. There was a pizza corner and some soup, too, which we did not try. Frankly, it was just too crowded to walk around any more than we already had.

The sweets were somewhat disappointing. The only things worth mentioning from what I tried are the apple crumble tart and the Viennese brownie cake. The cake with the caramel sauce and nuts on top wasn’t too bad either. The rest of the items shown below – bread (I assume) pudding, chocolate meringue roll/cake and the green coloured cake slice (we were told it was mango, but didn’t taste even remotely like mango) were not great. The sponge of the tiramisu (in the tea cup), which there was little of, was alright, but the cream was too heavy for it. A lighter cream might have made it more enjoyable. The scone was like bread. And I was looking forward to leaving the cramped and crowded set-up and crouched seating as soon as we were done with our tea.

I’m not sure if it was just a bad day or if this is the norm there, but the Waters Edge high tea buffet certainly didn’t feel like the affair to go to, or recommend, for a relaxed and enjoyable afternoon tea experience.

Yummy rating: 3.5 / 5.0