Green Cabin

453 Galle Road
Colombo 3
Tel: 2588811; 2591841

Although it has had gone through some rough patches over the past few decades, Green Cabin has now sprung back into popularity and gained the reputation it used to attract in the 40s and 50s, this time with the addition of a new restaurant to its long established bakery.

This restaurant, which serves a diverse selection of traditional Sri Lankan food, seats about 30 people in the veranda of the old building that houses the bakery, with a lackluster ambiance of dim fluorescent lighting and a lack of music. The food, however, is simply fantastic, served by old-school Sri Lankan waiters in sarongs.

This is an ideal place to dine out family-style with friends or family. Start off your meal with a glass of the popular sweet and milky Sri Lankan iced coffee. Get a portion of plain hoppers and egg hoppers (a crisp, concave pancake made of rice flour, with a choice of an egg in the center). These light “appam” (the local word for “hopper”) are best eaten with a few curries and a sambol (a spicy condiment eaten as a side dish). Try the godhamba rotti – a soft, chewy pancake – also eaten with curries, since it does not have much taste on its own. Order the mouth-watering cadju curry - a mustard colored cashew nut curry – and the tomato curry. As for meat choices, choose the chicken curry or the fish ambulthiyal (a sour, dry fish curry). And to accompany your meal, try the sweet and spicy seeni sambol (made of onions). The portions of the curries are small: about 3 or 4 curries and a couple of sambols will be sufficient for two people, and will provide a gamut of delicious Sri Lankan flavors.

If the bakery is open, step next door to end your meal with a chocolate éclair. They taste just as good as they did back in the day (apparently).