Located at: 36a Gower Street, Colombo 05, Sri Lanka

Visited on: 02nd February, 2025

While Bowl’d initially started off with a menu that predominantly comprised of poké bowls, they have, in recent years, expanded their menu to include a choice of appetisers, curries and stir fries, rice and noodles, sushi rolls, sashimi and salads. We were curious to check out their variety.

We started the evening off with their Prawn Salad with Nuac Nam Cham Dressing (LKR 1,800). They had done a good job with the Vietnamese-style spicy, sweet and sour dressing, and the lettuce was crunchy-fresh. However, the main elements – which were supposed to be prawn, mango and avocado – were in scarce quantity. There wasn’t much mango and the avocado was barely there. The overall flavour of it was good, though, which made it enjoyable to an extent. Unfortunately, any enjoyability that the food was going to offer that evening came to a standstill right there.

We tried a couple of dishes from their appetisers list, the first of which was Spicy Salmon & Crispy Rice (LKR 1,600). It looked enticing – eye-catching presentation. However, the salmon-mayo mix that sat atop the rice base was neither spicy, nor entirely fresh. The crispy rice base didn’t have the crunchy crispiness that we expected. Rather, it was quite hard and had absorbed a fair bit of oil from the frying process. There really wasn’t much flavour to it.

Similar issues met us with the Crispy Miso & Ginger Chicken (LKR 2,000). The chicken, again, seemed over-fried, and barely had any marination on it. In fact, there was a bit of a bitter after-taste to it. The miso mustard mayonnaise dip was nothing much, more mustard than miso, and – quite frankly – couldn’t help put the chicken out of its misery.

From the sushi offerings, we picked the Spicy Crispy Tuna (LKR 2,800). Well, there was no spiciness, certainly no crispiness, and the sushi – as a whole – was bland. I’m not quite sure how sushi can be made to taste as flavourless as that, but Bowl’d had managed to accomplish it. The wasabi that came with the dish was a bit watery and didn’t have any heat to it. I didn’t bother trying the pickled ginger.

Finally, we tried one of their desserts – Grilled Pineapple with Coconut Mousse & Ginger Beer Sorbet (LKR 1,200). The dish came to us with one of the key elements missing – the coconut mousse, and nothing mentioned about it. After much attempt to get the attention of the staff, and upon inquiry, we were told that the mousse was not available. Shortly after which we were asked to wait a bit and the unavailable mousse magically appeared alongside the other two elements. Either way, none of the elements wowed us – certainly not the grilled pineapple. The mousse was coconutty, yes, but also quite sweet, and (as you might notice in the image) could definitely be better in terms of texture. The ginger beer sorbet was refreshing at first bite, but also left a fair bit of overpowering sweetness on the palate after consumption. I probably ought to also mention here that the mint leaf slithers that had been used to garnish the dessert were far from fresh. There really was no need for it to be put on the dish.

Overall, our experience was a stark contrast to our expectation. Might we visit again? Erm, very unlikely. I shall now take my leave with a fairly generous rating, if I may say so myself.

Yummy Rating: 2.5 / 5.0