Thuna Paha by Waters Edge is by no means a new addition to Colombo’s dining scene – it’s been around since 2017 and is known by many as a go-to spot for authentic Sri Lankan cuisine.  Their signature village-style dining – ambula - experience is a novel concept that makes them stand out from the rest. 

The Concept
Thuna Paha is a buffet restaurant, but it’s not your average buffet restaurant.  At Thuna Paha, the buffet comes to you; served hot at your own table. This means you can skip standing in the queue with an overloaded plate of food that you served in one go so you don’t have to make the rounds again.  
Thuna Paha is inspired by the three (thuna) chefs that run the restaurant and how they evoke the five (paha) senses – sight, sound, smell, taste and feel - with their food and the ambience. Dining at Thuna Paha presents itself as an experience; away from the busier side of Waters Edge, opening up to the lake and the paddy fields, the restaurant is tranquil and peaceful embodying the concept of a ‘village within the city’. Their ‘ambula’ concept ties into this, with village lads and lasses in colourful redda and hatte bringing the dishes to your table in a rattan basket (wattiya) on their head – a regular feature seen in the villages of Sri Lanka back in the day when wives would carry lunch to their husbands working in the paddy fields in a woven basket. 

Adding to the experience is the unique entertainment offered at Thuna Paha as you dine.  On their busiest days, Friday and Saturday, a cultural show with low country dancing, on Sunday a lively calypso band, and from Monday – Thursday, traditional Sri Lankan music. 

The restaurant is open for both lunch and dinner - we opted for dinner. The dinner buffet features four starters, followed by platters of roast paan, string-hoppers, pittu, hoppers, kottu and so on and a buffet-style rice and curry offering with two kinds of rice, four meat and seafood dishes, four vegetable dishes and condiments, followed by dessert platters and hot kavili off their action stations. After the meal, you can enjoy a hot cup of yaara tea or ginger tea with a piece of jaggery.  If there is a particular local dish you are craving – a spicy Sri Lankan crab curry or a prawn thel dala – it can be ordered a la carte. 

The Starters
For starters, a tray of assorted bites. We got tempered spicy kadala (chickpeas), crispy mini wade, fried handellas and crunchy ash plantain and manioc chips. A combination that’s loved by any Sri Lankan, we happily ate our way through the starters – the chips and tempered kadala being addictively good. 

The Mains 
Our personal buffet arrived at our table in big rattan baskets, the dishes then placed on an induction table to keep the food warm.  Soon after, platters of pol roti, egg hoppers, pittu, string hoppers and kottu took over our table. Dinner was served – we just didn’t know where to start. 

The rice and curry was our favourite. Two types of rice; fluffy yellow rice and red rice, spicy chicken curry, kalu pol pork curry, ambul thiyal fish and curried cuttlefish as the four types of meat and seafood dishes and dry dhal curry, tempered potatoes, brinjal moju and cashew curry as the four vegetable dishes. Condiments included spicy pol sambol, lunu miris, chutneys, pickled lotus root and papadam.  
The meat curries were fantastic: the ambul thiyal had a good balance between sour and salt, the kalu pol pork curry was so aromatic and packed with the right spice and flavours and the Jaffna style cuttlefish curry was well done. Of the vegetables, we enjoyed the brinjal moju and the cashew curry but felt that the dhal curry was too dry and didn’t blend the rice with the curries as it usually should. 

From the platters, we happily dug into the pol roti and crispy egg hoppers with more of their kalu pol pork curry (so good!) and enjoyed Pittu and string hoppers with kiri hodi. Our only miss was the kottu which we didn’t enjoy as much as it lacked the zing and zest of a Lankan kottu. 

Dessert comes in the form of a platter for two with curd and treacle, watalappam, fruit salad, milk toffee and pol toffee. A hot basket of freshly made kawum, kokis, lavariya and wali thalapa is also brought to the table but we would recommend making your way to the action station where the village ammas are making the sweetmeats hot hot so you can snatch a few off their baskets.  The watalappam and the curd and treacle were clear standouts from the dessert. We capped off our night with a hot yaara tea and a hot kawum while chatting away with the friendly village staff – the most authentic experience of how Sri Lanka blends its hospitality with its food culture.  

The Experience
Overall, Thuna Paha is an experience not to be missed. It’s an authentic glimpse into the rich Sri Lankan culinary heritage that most of us have forgotten. It’s an ideal place to visit with friends and family and a fantastic place to introduce authentic Sri Lankan food.  

photos Nimalsiri Edirisinghe