I am SO annoyed with myself. I have not been able to locate most of the photos that I took of Mamas Galle Fort Roof Cafe on my camera’s SD card. I am 100% sure I took plenty of photos but I have no clue where they are now. I have been checking all my SD cards but no luck there.
Now, all I have are these 3 photos that I took on my second visit to the cafe. 🙁 And they are not exactly what I call good photographs.
Mamas Cafe was a place that I wanted to dine at in Galle. It was recommended to me by Sakura 🙂 and listed in the Lonely Planet as a ‘Top Visit’. When we arrived at the quaint little eatery located on the rooftop of a 3-storey shophouse during the late afternoon, I was immediately charmed. It looks to be a hit with tourists ‘cos the place was packed and every diner was a foreigner holding a Lonely Planet.
Service is a little slow at Mamas Cafe. It took the staff a while to bring us our menus, then it took them a little longer to take our orders, then it took an even longer time for the food to arrive. Many diners took turns to remind the staff of their orders and you could hear people muttering under their breath about how slow the service was. After a while, I couldn’t tell whether the food took a long time to arrive because of the time taken to prepare the food, or that the wait staff had simply forgotten to put in our orders. Later, I realised that the kitchen was on the first floor and the poor wait staff had to climb up and down 3 flights of staircases just to to put in their orders, collect the food and return the dirty dishes.
We are so used to living in a fast-paced environment that we have forgotten that not every country and culture has the same heartbeat (is this the right expression…? :-)) and what we think is slow or fast is relative to our living habits. Anyway, we are on holiday and could afford to wait. I took the time to take plenty of photographs of the cafe and the panoramic rooftop view of the cafe’s surroundings – which I have now lost.
Prior to Mamas Cafe, we have had no opportunity to try Sri Lankan curry rice. Our local travel agent who arranged our entire trip thought that we were not interested in eating Sri Lankan food, so they arranged mostly Western meals for us. Everytime I asked our guide to bring us to eat local food, he gave us a puzzled look. I felt frustrated. Why would we want to eat Western meals when we could have them anytime back home? Give me some local food! Practically every meal provided by the travel agent ended with me sulking and pouting and wanting to bang my head against the wall.
On both visits at Mamas, we ordered the curry rice set meal which came with white rice and 6 dishes consisting of curry chicken, vegetatables cooked in a spicy sauce and stewed pumpkin. I loved the curried okra and cabbage. Sri Lankan curry is cooked with many spices yet the flavor manages to remain light and underwhelming on the palate. I could eat piles of curry and not find the taste cloying after a while. We also tried the caramelised banana with vanilla ice-cream which was DAMN good! Pity that the photo of my dessert has disappeared along with the rest.
If we had a third free day, I am sure we would have returned to Mamas for another round of curry rice and caramelised bananas. That’s how much we liked the place.
