Tucked into the lower levels of Cinnamon Grand in Colombo, is a restaurant that promises to satisfy your craving for noodles. If, like me, you can’t go more than two weeks without Asian food – then Noodles is a welcome sight indeed. There’s not a huge amount of South East Asian food in Colombo, and it comes pretty highly recommended by the expats around town.
Walking in, we’re greeted with a display of all the varieties they have on offer, it’s a good selection and I have to admit that for the first time in a while, i’m getting excited for dinner.
Like any of the good hotel restaurants, the place is air-conditioned. There’s an pseudo-open kitchen on display, I say pseudo because although all the produce is on display here, it appears that most of the cooking is done out the back.
The tables are well spaced and there’s a lot of room for diners to sit without feeling too cramped in.
The menu is quite extensive; there’s a lot to choose from – appetisers, salads, noodle soups, fried noodles, desserts. It covers a lot of regional cuisine from Malaysia/Singapore, China and Thailand, with most of the menu items being Vietnamese (no surprise as that’s what the head chef is from) and Japanese.
To make it easier, the waiters come around with a little tablet that has pictures of every dish on the menu. It’s a nice touch I think, especially in Sri Lanka when you really never know how authentic the food you’re about to get is.
We’ve been craving fried noodles, so we settle on two from the list and a Thai salad, partly because I haven’t seen fresh veggies in a while and partly because I think that these seemingly simple dishes can really set good restaurant apart from an average one.
The green mango salad (Rs 350) is smaller than I expected, but I guess it is pretty cheap. I had requested it without anchovies, because in the photo it looked like they served it with western style anchovies (yuck!) rather than the Asian style crispy fried ikan bilis. It’s missing coriander as well, something that the menu promised would be on there. It’s fresh and zesty from the lime juice but lacks depth. I suspect that because I requested for no anchovies, they’ve omitted to use fish sauce in the dressing as well.
Next comes our kung pao chicken with egg noodles (Rs650). It looks exactly like the picture on the tablet. Unfortunately, it’s not great. The egg noodles are slightly soggy, almost overcooked and for some bizarre reason there’s huge chunks of celery in the stir fry. It’s not bad, it’s just generic food court type Asian food.
Lastly we get fried udon noodles (Rs 650). This time they’ve forgotten the bean sprouts and like the above dish, the noodles are on the soggy side, the dish is under seasoned and as a whole, very underwhelming. The chicken’s great though – perfectly cooked and very tender.
As a whole, I’m pretty disappointed in the whole Noodles experience so we decide to skip dessert. A few days later, after telling a friend about our disappointing experience she tells us that she just went recently and maybe we ordered badly. Having grown up on Chinese food, I really want to like this place – it’s pretty reasonably priced, and really how hard is it to cook noodles? We decide to give it another go. We’re told to opt for more of the small appetisers because that’s what they do well.
Reasoning that perhaps because the head chef is Vietnamese, we should opt for something more familiar to him, I have a look at the Pho.
It certainly doesn’t look like any pho I’ve had in Vietnam or Australia and that chunk of mystery beef there looks pretty unappetising, so I decide to pass. There’s no chicken pho to opt for either. Well, there’s that plan out the window.
We order Vietnamese shrimp rice paper rolls and they’re pretty good. My only gripe is that at Rs 850 (AU$8.50), it’s pretty expensive for one and a half rice paper rolls. Seriously, I could buy them cheaper than that in Melbourne.
Thank goodness for the crispy lobster ravioli (Rs 950). It’s not lobster, per se, it’s really a local cray fish of some kind – which is fine, it’s delicious, properly seasoned and the first thing we’ve had that’s actually been good. The crispy skin is properly cooked, blistering and bubbly. It’s pretty expensive, but it’s good.
Are these what you typically think of as gyoza? I didn’t think so. They’re alright – just the usual generic steamed dumplings. There’s a bit of a theme here… I’d write more but they’re not really worth writing about. Cost Rs 450.
N declares his glass noodle salad with prawns (Rs 750) ‘good’ but upon further questioning he concedes it’s ‘good for Colombo’ level good. Another alright dish in my book.
Lastly I get a small seafood udon noodle soup (Rs 650) which promises ‘prawns, crab stick, calamari and clams in a Korean style spicy broth’. Surprise, surprise there’s no crab stick, no calamari, no clams. The broth tastes like a watered down prawn mee and the noodles lacks the delicious springy texture of real udon. I’m just glad I ordered a small.
The verdict
On the all important G vs GFC index (good or just good for Colombo), it’s kind of neither. I really hate writing bad reviews because usually sometimes it’s just a case of a something going wrong that one time. I can understand that. But we’ve gone twice now and the food is really iffy. As a whole, the menu is high on variety and low on authenticity. It’s generic Asian – get some noodles, get some veggies, toss it in some sort of soy sauce type Asian. It’s not good and I honestly think Colombo can do better.
I get it, it’s hard to get good produce here. Imported items are taxed at 105%. It’s not easy to put together an authentic meal, but if you’re going to try maybe narrow down the menu a little. And stop forgetting ingredients in dishes.
For all my gripes about the food, service is good. They whisk away plates and reset your cutlery. Some of the appetisers are expensive, but the noodle dishes are pretty cheap for hotel dining and the ambience is good. But’s still not enough to make me want to return.
Noodles
Cinnamon Grand, Colombo
+94 11 2 437437
Open 7 days a week
All opinions are my own. I went to this restaurant and paid for food myself, unless otherwise stated.
Really like your remarks. Many people would not give their honest opinion on a place like Cinnamon Grand. They just pay and assume this is what good food tastes like. Nice to get the point of view from a person who knows this cuisine well.
Thank you. I’ve really heard only good things about it, but I don’t think it’s fair for me to pretend it’s something it’s not. I spent a bit there and in retrospect I wish I’d spent it somewhere else.
Hi Tash, I had dinner at Noodles sometimes last year. 1 out of 4 dishes we ordered that night was okay (GFC). I only remember my son had the roast duck with noodles, and he was very happy with the dish. For dessert my husband ordered Pandan (Rampe in Sinhalese) Cheese Cake. When it arrived at our table, we were confused coz the colour of the Pandan Cheese Cake was yellow-ish with yellow coloured sauce. When we taste it, we were more puzzled coz we cannot taste the pandan and ontop of that they served it with manggo sauce with manggo chunks. We asked the manager about it and he insist that IT is a Pandan cheese cake.
Good to know – thanks for sharing! Hope other people can order better with our experience.
Hi, thanks for this. The food has been okay for me but my main gripe is the silly booking system that have. They only take reservations twice in the evening and God forbid you do not go with 630 or 930 they seem to suggest you cannot book! I said j would book at 8pm and the lady reluctantly told me I would need to vacate the table at 9 then. Horrible service for a hotel of this caliber if u ask me. It’s a weird system and their staff are not equipped to kindly inform potential customers. Since I’ve v rarely seen this type of booking I wonder even how effective it is??
Does seem strange seeing as it’s really big restaurant and I can’t imagine that they were so full that they needed your table back at 9pm? But I’ve noticed a lot of restaurants do this in Colombo though I’m not sure why.
I was surprised at your title but reading on I can see that I also noticed a few of the same shortcomings. I love noodles, mostly because it’s affordable and tasty Asian food, their beef dishes are usually very good (rare in Colombo), and there’s no other place that has that range and is so affordable. I was told by our waiter that their speciality was in fact noodle soups, so for my first few visits I stuck to the soup section. I loved the duck, the spicy Korean seafood,one and I like that it comes in two sizes so I can pick based on my appetite. But I ordered the pho recently and couldn’t really stomach eating that bizzare meat chunk. Pho Vietnam does a much better pho (broth and good beef brisket). Their noodle stir fries, especially the pork and beef dishes have always been delicious, although I agree that the noodles are sometimes overdone.
The desserts ARE terrible! I’ve tried this questionable pandan cheesecake and it’s a typical Sri Lankan bufffet dessert (all gelatin), only the molten chocolate lava cake was ok, but I wouldnt personally have ordered that for myself at a place called Noodles.
If you go another time try the duck or the beef udon!
Thanks for the tip and agree with the Pho Vietnam! Will try the Udon or Korean soup you recommended if we do go back – though I think I’m tempted by chutneys more these days.