Dinner at Tao

For two of my friend's last night in Colombo, we decided to go to Tao to try their 24-course epicurean degustation menu. Before doing this, we dropped into Music Matters for Big Ears. It was poetry night. Pretty entertaining. But before doing that, we took 5mg of valium. And to make it worse, after Big Ears, my friend made me take another one. I knew it was a dumb thing to do before going out, but I succumbed to peer pressure.

We got to Tao pretty late and hungry. Each tiny portion came out one by one, with a 5-10 minute interval in between. As the meal progressed, service time quickened up and some courses came out together. This was good, because by about course 15 we were getting really drowsy. By dessert, I was pretty much asleep!

I attempted to photograph the whole menu, but missed some out of hungriness, and many of the photos just didn't turn out well. The photos are presented here in no particular order:


Left: chicken floss caesar salad. Middle: lemon & lime lamb osso bucco. Right: asian spiced mini shepherd's pie served with red curry hinted lamb jus.


Left: blue lip mussels with matsuhisa salsa. Middle: cheesy green cucumber rolls with miso glaze & pickled chilies. Right: smoked turkey with mango salsa.


Left: green asparagus with mozzarella cheese sauce. Middle: trio of soups (tomato & vongole soup; chilled avocado & jalapeno pepper soup; celery bisque with almond flakes). Right: One of the two dessert plates (blueberry & mascarpone tart; espresso creme brulee, baileys banana cream with chip cheese towers; deluxe fruit platter with raspberry sorbet)

As for the food, I think some courses were more successful than others, and often the dishes made from simple, locally available ingredients were better than the ones including expensive, imported products.Stand out dishes for me included the 'lemon & lime lamb osso bucco', 'asian spiced mini shepherd's pie served with red curry hinted lamb jus', the 'celery bisque with almond flakes', the 'chicken floss caesar salad', and the desserts. The desserts are a bit of a haze, but thinking about them brings back pleasant connotations.The dishes I didn't particularly enjoy were the 'smoked turkey with mango salsa', the 'soy glazed pan fried salmon & jasmine rice with curry sauce', and the 'roast duck on noodle cake with hoisin sauce'.

Overall, I think it's a really cool initiative of Tao, and pretty affordable considering that each course is less than 100 rupees! The menu changes monthly, so i definitely plan on going back there.

Yiling has a more a more complete set of pictures and descriptions. She probably didn't take tranquilizers before going there.

lunch at the gallery cafe.

Left: a cute little caterpillar who joined us for lunch. Right: chicken with lemongrass and ginger, on potato and spinach mash. 

Left: tamarind and chilli martini. Delicious and unique. (background: pad thai, apparently also good). Middle: jaggery creme brulée. This is my favourite dessert here, and pretty much the only thing I order. Right: I'm can't remember the name of this. I only had one bite and thought it wasn't very nice. There was some meringue, chocolate mousse stuff, and cherries. It was sickly sweet and, I would say, not very sophisticated. I have a major sweet tooth, and this was too sweet for me.