Lakruwana

Post published on May 17, 2021 by vspiceroute

Last post modified on May 18, 2021 by vspiceroute

We recently visited Sri Lankan restaurant in Staten Island, New York that is also artistic museum. This is a family owned restaurant and they are displaying over 200 pieces of sculpture in the restaurant and it creates an amazing ambiance. Everything is placed creatively and when you look around you will only find 2/3 pieces that are repeating. They had lot of vegetarian and vegan options in their menu. We have been to Sri Lankan restaurant before so we kind of knew what to expect as far as food.

We ordered their cutlet for appetizer, vegetable Lamprais that we had never tried before and Kottu Paratha that we had eaten before. Everything is served with sambol that are variety of Sri Lankan pickles.

The cutlet was served with a cute flower on the top made from carrot. The cutlet was flavorful and it was not too spicy so my son completely enjoyed it. It was served with a sweet and tangy sauce that tasted very different from tamarind chutney. It paired very well with each other and tasted delicious.

The Lamprais that we had never tried before was our favorite. 3/4 vegetarian curries are cooked with rice and cutlet in a banana leaf. This was so delicious, my favorite was charred eggplant curry, it had sweet, tangy and spicy flavor and it was just super delicious. We also liked the other curries and the rice was cooked to perfection with right amount of flavors.

The Kottu Paratha tasted ok to us. Since we had this before at a different restaurant we thought this was not the best one we had before. It was flavorful and had lot of veggies but I would not order this here next time. It tasted good when combined with Sambol.

The highlight of Sri Lankan food is Sambol that is like a pickle on the side and everything goes very well with. It is spicy and is made with many ingredients and there are different types. This restaurant had only one kind of sambol available that is made with onions and it tasted very delicious.

The mango lassi was very good and you will be surprised the mango flavor was very different from most Indian restaurants.

The mango mousse that did not taste like a mousse more like a jello. It tasted ok and nothing extraordinary.

The service was ok, we had to keep on asking for attention and the server who is also the owner of the restaurant forgot a lot of things.

I was told that they usually have buffet on weekends with tons of vegetarian options and it priced at $15 per person. I would definitely return to try their buffet after May 29, 2021.

Overall it was worth the visit, the service was little weak but I would give them another chance as they are family owned and a small business.