Gardenia – Reviewed

by Anuki Premachandra

Cozy hues of the summer

Gardenia is a very simple, welcoming eatery at Colombo’s Ramada Hotel. It’s a café by day and a restaurant whipping up a great North Indian buffet by night. You would have realized the price quote at the top of the article for breakfast. They’ve got a breakfast buffet as well, which we can’t wait to try it out!

The small, but warm space is decorated with intricately drawn wall hangings of a range of beautiful flowers. They’ve got a lovely bright yellow pantone reappearing on the serviettes and the lights, and it makes the space a  perfect representation of a warm summer.

They’ve actually got a pretty fascinating spread for Rs.2500. For one, paying Rs.2500 for a buffet is a bonus and for the other, having a variety of options in a buffet as low as this is another bonus. Their spread was entirely traditionally North Indian and we loved it. So many varieties and delicacies and if you were to order it À la Carte elsewhere, it would have cost you twice as much.  

Service & Ambience

Their service is something we felt, needs slight intervention. The waiters were not proficient in English and there was a lot of going back and forth because of that.

Another downside was the fact that the passageway to the kitchen was in the middle of the small dining area. The fact that kitchen staff were walking up and down continuously really made it an inconvenience to the diners.

They’ve got some good overhead music being played over a speaker. It blends well with the summer hues and chic café dining experience Gardenia aims to achieve.

Food and Drinks

Drinks: Unforgettable – Rs. 850

Unforgettable was a mix of cognac, cointreau, grapefruit juice, triple sec and lime. It was a pretty good cocktail because the grapefruit and the lime cuts into the alcohol and leaves a right balance. I wouldn’t say it was an “unforgettable” cocktail, but I think its got some bragging right anyway.  

Appetizers

The soup of the day was by the name “Mixed Sabzi Ka Shorba”. From the looks of it, we figured out that it was a vegetable soup, and their chef assured us. It was a very light  soup, which appeared more vegetable stock and less of a thick syrup of blended veggies. Some corn/dhal remains were scattered at the bottom of my plate. That’s the only visible vegetables I saw in the soup. Unlike in most cases, this was actually a good thing.

Next, we decided to give their fancy looking shooters a shot. We tried the Pineapple with Mint shooter, Celery Green Pepper shooter and the Ginger Melon Shooter, which we liked the best.

They actually had about 5-6 salads for us to choose from, which I thought was pretty reasonable given that we aren’t paying over the roof prices for our plates. I tried a Greek Salad and a German Potato salad. The Greek salad had an abundance of fresh crunch salad leaves, and I drizzled some garlic mayo and thousand island over it that made the salad a whole lot better. The croutons on the other other hand, that I had also drizzled onto my plate, were soggy and sad.

Mains

As a die-hard fan of North Indian food, I felt everything I possibly could when I recognized that the line of dishes I saw in front of my eyes were all North Indian specialities. You literally experience another high from seeing all of the varieties of Indian food you didn’t even know existed.

Here’s a quick breeze through the top few options were thought were worthy of being featured in this article. Their chicken biriyani was pretty great. Packed with chunky pieces of spicy chicken, the rice was nothing short of flavor and appeal.

Their butter naan was also pretty good. But instead of the butter naan, I would rather pick their Warqui Paratha with Bhaji. This was a puff pastry-ish parata accompanied by a curry-less Indian potato mash and some good chutney. It was the first time I had that kind of parata and it really was a highlight.

Aligning the three rice dishes they had, were a few meat and seafood curries. They had a chicken curry, a mutton “Dalsha Gosht” curry, and a “Jhinga Chutnewala” prawn curry. I’d really have to give it up for their meat curries. The chicken and the mutton especially were juicy to the bone. The meat seemed to have been marinated for days and the spices were en point.

It was from their live fry station that I had my Warqui Parata. It was also from the same station that we had some out of the world dhal wadai. Each wadai, uludu, and two types of dhal wadai that they were frying, had different accompaniments. The uludu wadai had the traditional minchi and tomato sambol. But the others had chutnies that were slightly different. Have each fried food with the recommended accompaniment; it really does make a difference.

Dessert

So it was their salads and desserts spread that had other continental options. We rushed to the dessert table with the Gulab Jamun. Needless to say, it was some epic Gulab Jamun and really is one worth trying. Next, I tried their Caramelized Bread Pudding. This was the outcome of a bread based caramel pudding. Nothing to complain about it, and it was so much more fun to eat than a boring and plain old caramel pudding.

The little Rich Chocolate Cake square I had will always hold a special place in my heart. It was a small square of impeccably soft and gooey chocolate cake that I wish came a few sizes larger. But hey, it’s a buffet. This is when the “All you can eat” component comes to play.

Have you tried Gardenia yet? Let us know what you think of it in the comments below! Is there anything we’ve missed?

Tip: Call and find out if they’re serving dinner buffet or not.