Located at : Cinnamon Red, 59 Ananda Coomaraswamy Mawatha, Colombo 03, Sri Lanka

Visited on : 25 Nov, 2023

Price                  : LKR 5,500 nett per person

Availability     : Daily, 19:00 – 22:30

Cinnamon Red is the lean luxury option that Cinnamon City Hotels offer in the heart of Colombo. Their main restaurant, Flavoured, puts out a dinner buffet every day, while lunch is an à la carte affair.

The dinner spread is not as large as those of Cinnamon Grand and Cinnamon Lakeside, of course, but is quite impressive for its price which is below the rates at Plates and The Dining Room. Hence, good value for money.

There is a selection of salads – vegetarian, as well as meat/seafood salads – pickles, cold cuts, cheese, sushi, and a few other items like bruschetta at the appetisers corner. The only thing that was below par here was the chicken liver pâté which was in fact more like a slice of luncheon meat. I tried two of their three shooters Melon & Star Anaise, and Spicy Mango – both of which were interesting, spiced up flavours. We also tried both soups – Pumpkin, and Chicken & Vegetable, and while being two completely different types, both tasted good. The bread rolls that we picked – one with onion relish and the other a brown bread – certainly impressed in both texture and taste.

The mains section involved an array of dishes that covered Sri Lankan, Indian, Far Eastern and Western cuisines, offering guests a wide selection of international options. There was also a hopper station from which we tried their unique karapincha (curry leaf) hopper. The curry leaf flavour came through rather pleasantly in the nearly paper-thin hopped. In fact, I enjoyed most of the dishes that I tried – the crab fried rice was delicious, the honey-glazed roast potato had a satisfyingly mild sweetness to it, the Thai minced pork was excellent, and the grilled modha with its cilantro-infused white sauce was very good. It was great to see godhamba roti on offer, and it was even better to realise that the roti was thin, not oily and tasted good. The naan, too, was nicely done. The mint chutney and pol sambol were well-prepared, too – not too spicy.

From the desserts, I really liked the mango tart, which was just the right sweetness and softness in the sponge, with a wonderful tart shell that was neither too hard, nor fell apart. Also really good was the German chocolate cake that looked quite sweet and dense, but was actually quite spongy and not too sweet – acquiring just the right amount of sweetness from the accompanying custard sauce. I was told that the watalappan was pretty spot-on, too.

Flavoured’s dinner buffet is inclusive of a selection of hot teas and coffees at a self-service counter.

Yummy rating: 4.0 / 5.0