Colombo Street, a new Sri Lankan restaurant opened recently at Fletcher gate in the building formerly occupied by Rub Smokehouse. If the name seems familiar that could be that you had spotted them at various street food events around town over the last couple of years in their brightly coloured food truck.

They were at Nottingham Street Food down at the Sneinton location and also at the Garage in Chilwell on occasion serving the street food variants of the Sri Lankan Cuisine

Now up on Adams walk they are combining those classic Streetfood dishes with other Sri Lankan offerings inside the restaurant.

I had not tried Colombo Street‘s offerings or this cuisine before properly so we took advantage of one of their lunchtime special offers to get a taste of what it was all about.

At lunch, which here is quite a long lunch, running between 12 – 4pm, they have two offers on at the moment. You can have one of their Fried Rice dishes with a soft drink included for £6.95 or one of their Kottu dishes (also with a soft drink) for £8.95

I had never had Kottu before so was keen to check that out. The menu describes this as “Gothamba Roti finely chopped and stir fried on a hot griddle with fresh vegetables and infused with the flavours of fragrant curries served with fresh homemade coconut chutney’

I was intrigued so gamely ordered one to try

COCO CHICKEN KOTTU

The Cocu Chicken Kottu turned out to be a rather large dish in the end, it arrived so neatly laid out on the plate that I almost didn’t want to disturb it’s beauty. It was a instagrammer’s delight, and even I managed to get a half decent snap that showed it in all its glory.

Apparently the Kottu was a throwback to their Columbo Street On-Wheels days where they were serving this up at the Streetfood events.

It is as the menu describes a Sri Lankan Gothambu roti finely chopped up and stir fried with egg, fresh vegetables, chicken, and the chicken curry flavoring. Now if you had this as a main meal you would also get a bowl of whatever your chosen curry was as well.

I know this might sound just a bit too simplistic but my take was that it was like the egg fried rice only using chopped up roti instead of rice? Whatever the essence of it is, all I can say is that it really is rather good and somewhat moreish.

The accompanying Coconut Sambal was descibed as a ‘classic mix of grated coconut, chilli, lime and onion’. Now I didn’t really notice the coconut apart from the texture, but I certainly noticed the chilli and the lime which added both acid and a fair amount of heat when mixed into a spoonful of kottu. I would advise a little caution, but not too much as that would be a whole lot less fun.

CHICKEN COCO KOTTU

The Kottu itself was a quite solid, standing proudly on the table without toppling, but it was really very easy to eat. Somehow the chopped up roti was a bit meaty texture wise and strangely I kind of liked that as it was unexpected on my first visit to this dish.

Vegetable wise there was all sorts but I mostly found carrots, onions and perhaps some sort of shredded cabbage in there. It added a lot of crunch so there was a lot of interesting textures going on.

I often discard a fresh chilli when it is laid on top of my food as a garnish, but today I was chopping it up and mixing it into spoonfuls that I was scooping up to my mouth and that extra little tingle of spicy heat was actually quite a delightful addition to the experience.

Honestly I was so glad that we came in to try this dish out as now I have a much better idea about the tastes and the type of food and flavours on offer here.

I am coming back here again for certain and I already know what I am getting. On the main menu they offer a larger Kottu experience that includes various curry dishes that you can add, and I quite fancy having that with the Ceylon Mutton Curry, a slow cooked goat in a rich peppery sauce. I can see those two being excellent bedfellows.

Other mains include a ‘Classic Rice and Curry Platter‘ which sounds less adventurous but perhaps more familiar to many. It does come with quite a few of the different dhal and sambals so I reckon would have a lot of interesting flavours to try out

They also have a Hopper feast which is the curry served with three ‘crispy-edged bowl-shaped savory pancakes alongside a couple of sambals and a Dhal.

I saw a couple of the bowl pancakes and I really want to try one of those, especially when I saw that you can get one with an egg in the bottom. I have to try that too

Colombo Street is located at 2-4 Adam’s Walk, Fletcher Gate, Nottingham, NG1 1QS. It is quite close to the Lace Market Tram stop and so easy for public transport

You can check them out and the menu on the Colombo Street website, and also on the usual socials, their Facebook page, Instagram profile, and their Twitter feed.