Bavarian Garden – Reviewed

A German meal under the stars

The Bavarian Garden is one of the Waters Edge’s newest additions. It’s a beautiful outdoor dining venue that excels in German Cuisine. The place is absolutely gorgeous and perfect for an enchanting date night. It’s just beside their other outdoor dining space outside the Water’s Edge, Boardwalk. The place is completely an outdoor dining establishment and has about a total of 15-20 cement tables with long benches that accolade up to 3 people a side. There’s really fancy looking marquees on about 5 of the tables and the rest are completely under the beautiful starry sky. It’s not a fine dining venture, but we’d classify it as a “fancy” dining establishment.

Seeing that Colombo has only a handful of German places, and that The Bavarian Garden is almost towards the outskirts of Colombo, we were super excited  to try it out. Here’s how our dining adventure unfolded…

Food and Drinks

Drinks: Cooler Hart – Rs. 1200, Dancing Angel – Rs. 550, Cinnamonaide – Rs. 800 and Edge Delight – Rs. 600

They offer an amazing complementary Mocktail; Smooth Walker which is a mix of lemonade and mint. It’s a great pick-me-up after a long day.

We found their Beer Cocktails to be pretty interesting, so we decided to give it a shot.

The Cooler Hart is a cocktail with an orange base. It’s got a sudden sweet tinge to it that acts as a great refresher when coupled with the orange zest. The cocktail had an uncanny sour taste to it. We loved this…

The Dancing Angel was a concoction of ginger and beer. They’ve got finely diced ginger at the bottom of the glass which wasn’t an outstanding favorite factor about the drink. It tasted more “ginger beer” like and watery and hence, we felt like the taste was slightly overly exaggerated.

Cinnamonaide was by far our favorite cocktail. It was more beer than everything else when compared to the other cocktails we tried. It had the perfect ratio of beer to everything else in it.

The Edge Delight wasn’t as much a personal favorite. It had more of a Tomato Daiquiri taste to it, than one with a beer base. It wasn’t a terrible drink, but we thought it had an acquired tasted to it that was surprisingly pleasant.

Appetizers: German Appetizer Platter for 2 – Rs. 1100

The German Appetizer Platter had a few amazing dishes in one. There were bowls of Bavarian Sausage Salad, Potato Salad, Cabbage Salad, Ham and Roast Pork, Obatza and a massive pretzel.

The German Sausage Salad was amazing. This was about the time we realized that the platter was a complete run for our money. The salad was a mix of smoky sausage and mustard with a tinge of citrus zest.

The Cabbage Salad was a great take on a German necessity.

The boys loved the cold potato salad. It was blanketed with a creamy mustard flavor and worked so well with the medium boiled potatoes chunks.

Next we got down to the meat; the tiny slices of ham and pork. They were amazing. The slices were super soft and tasted extravagantly smoky.

The Obatza is a buttery cheese spread that worked so well with the salty big pretzels. We literally licked the Obatza off the bowl.

Mains: Grilled Coarse Chicken Bratwurst Sausage with Sauerkraut & Potato Mash – Rs. 650, Grilled Cumberland Sausage with Sauerkraut and Potato Mash (for two) – Rs. 1450 and Half Roast Chicken with Cabbage Salad and French Fries – Rs. 990

The Grilled Coarse Chicken Bratwurst Sausage with Sauerkraut & Potato Mash dish is a mix of chicken bratwurst and cabbage cooked with bacon and onion gravy. We loved the Bratwurst the best if were to compare the Bratwurst and Cumberland sausages. It was grilled on the outer that caused it to have a roast-smoked taste on the outer skin of the sausage but a juicy tight minced meat flavor on the inside. We’d give the potato mash a thumbs up.

As like with the chicken Bratwurst, the Grilled Cumberland Sausage is a mix of the sausage itself, cabbage cooked with bacon and the onion gravy. The sausage was insanely juicy and was super yummy. The massive sausage wrapped around the plate would obediently break into smooth chunks when your cutlery dives into it. Just like the with the Bratwurst chicken dish, we’d give the potato mash a thumbs up but the cabbage salad, not so much.

The Half Roast Chicken with Cabbage Salad and French Fries was a heaven of a dish. The chunky fries were an absolute delight. So was the creamy cabbage sambol. We loved it because we were blown away by the tangy pickled taste the sambol-turned-salad had inherited and the crisp it sustained from the fresh cabbage shreds. The roast chicken was the best. We loved the crispy skin and the contrastingly tender meat inside.

Dessert: Homemade Apple Strudel with Vanilla Ice cream – RS. 350 and Wild Berry Strussel with Vanilla Ice Cream – Rs. 350

The Homemade Apple Strudel is a mix of apple, raisins, cinnamon powder, brown butter and strudel dough. The warm apple pie, the crispy pastry and the ice cold vanilla was a combination from the heavens.

The Wild Berry Strussel had a bread like base, a thick berry jam and the cold vanilla ice cream. All of them paired together were an absolute show stopper. The layers looked so beautiful and were so neatly aligned in a slice.

Service & Ambience

The place has got less of a fine dining vibe and more of a chilled hangout vibe. They’ve got Samsung tabs (a sign of Sri Lanka’s finally embracing globalization) as menus that we found pretty cool. The only issue we had with the place was the service. It was pretty slow and we would have wished the mains came to our table faster. We loved the live band. They played a mix of classics and contemporary rock and kept everyone on their feet the whole night.

We wished the many mosquitoes that bit our legs the whole night weren’t a part of the experience though ☹

Have you dropped into The Bavarian Garden yet? Let us know what you think of it in the comments below! Is there anything we’ve missed?

Tip: The German Appetizer Platter is a great run for your money. A must try!