This is not about crockery for a special meal, but about a new restaurant in Colombo at the five-star Cinnamon Grand Hotel. It’s called Plates and is, in fact, the hotel’s old and gloomy Taprobane buffet restaurant reborn as a light, bright, super contemporary, all-purpose restaurant with a difference: a service style that is confident and courteous and genuine five-star standard.
Eating in a buffet restaurant requires practice. Novices will load up their plate with everything. Perhaps that is why Plates is called Plates: encouragement for diners to have plenty of plates of different food, instead of lumping everything together on a single plate.
I have learned when lured to a buffet encounter to inspect everything on offer first, before plunging in. The buffet counter at Plates is currently in a Covid-19 transparent plastic bubble with counter and chefs inside. Wearing a mask, you hand a chef your plate through a gap and he puts your selection of items on it.
Cinnamon Grand Hotel Plates: What a selection!
And what a selection! Plates draws on the dishes and skills of the chefs from the hotel’s many speciality restaurants, so guests have the divine roast and grilled meats of the classic London Grill headlining an array of Asian, Chinese, Japanese, and European (yes, there’s even a pizza oven) choices.
I had smoked salmon, salad and sashimi as a starter then focused on the succulent roast leg of lamb with Cauliflower Mornay. My guest tried everything: ham, beef, lamb, mussels, cuttlefish, prawns, all on the same plate and finished it with obvious relish.
I spurned the enticement of delicious desserts and ice cream for a selection of cheeses (Danish Blue and Brie), an unusual item on a hotel’s buffet counter.
Plates also has a wide range of A La Carte dishes served to the table on request. These seemed to be popular with guests sitting on the veranda deck outside the air-conditioned restaurant, enjoying the pool view, the fresh air and the amazing greenery of so many trees in the middle of city property.
As well as Plates at Cinnamon Grand, Colombo has another restaurant named after a utensil: Spoons at the Colombo Hilton. If this is a trend, I expect we shall soon see the other five-star hotels opening restaurants named Knives and Forks. They will have to be extra good to compete with Plates.
The Plates is open 24 hours a day, with the lunch buffet available from 12 noon. This superlative lunch buffet costs Rs3,000 nett.
Plates Restaurant, Cinnamon Grand Hotel, Colombo; reservations telephone: 011 2497377
