The Avenue looks to breathe fresh air into Colombo’s restaurant space

By Madushka Balasuriya 

For all its improvement in recent years, Colombo’s food scene still has some way to go in order to reach the benchmarks set by some of the world’s leading metropolitan cities. But that gap is fast closing, and aiding this process is the latest entrant to Colombo’s high-end restaurant space, The Avenue.

Located on Alfred House Avenue, The Avenue officially opened for business yesterday, 9 October, and its promise is one of high quality fusion cuisine, though the buzzword is most definitely consistency. 

“One day we might go to a place and it’s good, but the next day it might be bad. The consistency is very bad in Sri Lanka,” bemoans Oshan Jayasundara, co-founder of The Avenue. “Sometimes the food is really good but the server won’t treat you right. The next time the server is really nice but the food is really bad.”

The Avenue is a joint collaboration between Jayasundara, Charitha Pathiranage and Shanika Nanayakkara. Daily FT recently sat down with two of the three – Jayasundara and Pathiranage, who is also the Executive Chef at The Avenue – ahead of their official launch to learn a bit more about what they had planned for this latest restaurant on the block.

Modern rustic

The first thing you notice about the space is the look. Modern rustic is the vibe The Avenue is striving for, and it’s one that strikes a fine balance between homely and upscale. With caricatures drawings of famous musicians and line art adorning the walls, there’s also a certain chic sophistication to the place.

The main attraction however is undoubtedly the backyard. Despite The Avenue’s location being just walking distance from the busy main road, to walk through the premises and enter its outdoor dining area out back is to almost be transported. 

Accommodating roughly 50 pax – the entire establishment can fit around 120 – it is at once both a social and intimate area designed to allow patrons to let loose, wind down, and draw themselves away from whatever problems life may be throwing at them the rest of the time.

With the restaurant also holding a liquor license, and the area a veritable business hub, The Avenue’s backyard space (with a marquee readily available in the event of adverse weather) is as close to a sure-fire hit as you’re likely to find.

“With the marquees, customers can relax there, have a nice glass of scotch or enjoy a pitcher of beer. That’s why we’re targeting people who want to come and enjoy a really fine meal, and walk out having had a really good time with their family and friends,” explained Jayasundera.

For more exclusive gatherings meanwhile, there is also a private dining area, which can fit about 25-30 people.

High calibre cuisine

In the end, however, a beautiful space can only take you so far. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. And while The Avenue doesn’t serve pudding, what they do serve is still certainly worth paying attention to.

To understand why, you must first get to know the man behind the food. Chef Pathiranage has been a professional chef for over a decade and in that time he has worked with some of the world’s most talented chefs, most notably Marc Forgione.

If Forgione sounds familiar, that’s because he was the youngest chef to receive a Michelin star, while his father Larry Forgione is widely considered the Godfather of American cuisine. The younger Forgione is also one of the Iron Chefs competing on Food Network’s Iron Chef America and owner of restaurant Marc Forgione in New York City.

For Pathiranage this experience has been invaluable, and unsurprisingly held him in good stead as he embarked on this venture four years ago.

“Oshan and I have known each other for 12 years,” says Pathiranage. “We both lived in the States, which is where we went to culinary school. With my experience working under Marc at his Michelin star restaurant and Oshan’s background in catering, we really want to give Sri Lankan diners something unique.

“I wouldn’t say our culinary industry is poor, but we still have a long way to go. As Sri Lankan I just don’t think we have reached that [really high] level yet. When you go to have a burger, if you ask for a medium rare, you really can’t find that here in most places.”

“At the same time you have more than 30,000 people in Colombo who have had the experience around the world, but here they don’t have the opportunity to have a really good steak. You know getting that real charred-ness, get all the aromatics together. So that’s our experience in Sri Lanka, and where we’re looking to make a difference.”

Indeed, among the main highlights one can expect at The Avenue is some extremely high-calibre steak. While Colombo diners may be familiar with T-bone and Rib-eye, they may be less familiar with colossuses that are the Porterhouse and Tomahawk, both of which can be enjoyed to your heart’s – and stomach’s – content at The Avenue. And at a price that doesn’t break the bank when quality is factored in.

“If you really sell a 40oz Tomahawk steak it’s going to be like 30,000 rupees, but don’t want to have like five customers in a day. So that’s why we meet in the middle, a good balance. Rather than selling a 40oz Tomahawk, we’ll sell maybe close to a 30oz, so the price won’t go as high, but people can eat and the quality is still there,” explained Pathiranage.

“We’re planning to do about 11-15k for a Tomahawk. We don’t just want to cater to a few people. We have many other things as well, we have chicken wings, we have our own spices, we have burgers, sandwiches, tuna, plenty of dishes. Every single thing is done in-house. Those are the differences that we’re hoping to make, and ideally get more people to enjoy really quality food.”

In terms of the menu, The Avenue will start with somewhere around 30 items on the menu with a lot of familiar favourites inspired by American, Asian, Italian, and French cuisine.

Sourcing

But to deliver a certain calibre of cuisine consistently and to exacting standards there is one uncompromising requirement – quality ingredients, which is among one of the primary reasons why the venture has been four years in the making.

When conducting market research prior to setting up, Pathiranage reveals that there were several roadblocks to overcome, one of which was the prohibitive costs of sourcing quality foreign ingredients.  

“The first thing is that people in Sri Lanka struggle when it comes to the food cost, purchasing food. Let’s say you want to make a nice red wine sauce, if you use two port wines, and two red wines, it’s going to cost more than 10,000 rupees. So how are you going to sell that? This is the reality of this industry.

“Recently I ate at a restaurant where you could say that the tuna wasn’t sashimi grade. I mean it was good, but in real high quality restaurants you can’t serve that. That’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. I believe we have good chefs, people who know industry, but they’re struggling about this little stuff, so they can’t do what they really want to do.”

He adds that for the time being they will be sourcing ingredients from Australia, but that that gradually they will be looking the shift to suppliers from America. The delay in moving from one to the other has been purely surrounding red tape that a lot of fledgling restaurants have to wade through in Sri Lanka.

“For now we’re getting from Australia, but in the future we’re hoping to get the registration sorted out so that we can get it from the States. We have our own vendors doing a very high quality product. But it’s really hard to get that through the customs, the taxes are really high. This is the fourth time we’re trying to get samples for Parmesan cheese. We really can’t find the taste that we want.

“So because of that we struggled to find the right ingredients or similar ingredients in order to get the taste right. And we have also been doing a lot of taste tests to make sure everything is just right.”

For The Avenue, the ultimate goal is to provide Colombo’s residents with a type of meal experience they’ve likely never had before.

“We have more than 30,000 people living in Colombo and they have the experience of eating internationally. But when they eat a big steak it should be flambé, they should have a table side – I don’t think we have table sides in Sri Lanka – so what we’re planning to do is, from the first day, we want to do table sides. Let’s say you have a Tomahawk or a Porterhouse, they’re going to come and cook in front of you, and the steak is made right in front of the customer. These are the little things we really need. And we hope to do something unique.”

Attention to detail

As mentioned earlier, among the biggest pet peeves of both Jayasundara and Pathiranage is a lack of consistency, both in terms of food and service. To address this, the pair have taken matters into their own hands, with all the staff being almost completely retrained.

“We do have kitchen staff with over 20 years of experience, but the first thing I told them when we first started was ‘forget about what you know, forget about what you learned, purify your mind and start from me’,” explained Pathiranage. 

“In this industry you learn a lot of wrong things, people very rarely learn the right thing. You need to go from the beginning. It’s easier for us to train them, they have the experience, they have knife skills, they have all the techniques – but you need to train them properly from zero, especially because this a brand new menu and they need to follow it to a T.”

For Pathiranage, it’s a matter of avoiding the pitfalls he has seen many other restaurants, both in Sri Lanka and abroad, succumb to.  “This industry is corrupted for sure. It’s not just in Sri Lanka, it’s everywhere. People who come here, they think just about the money. This industry can’t be like that. That’s why we need to be here, to train them and give them the right attitude.

“This industry is not rocket science, it’s simply based on your attitude. As long as you have a good attitude, you learn things. If you don’t, you can’t.”

Adds Jayasundara, “It’s not like an 8-5 job, you gotta be here all day, all night, and make sure people go home happy.”

Pix by Sameera Wijesinghe