Thank you for dining at Ceylonta. We strive our best to create a great dining and an authentic Sri Lankan culinary experience for all our guests. Feel free to post your comments as we would love to hear from you about your dining experience at our restaurant. This will help us serve you better.
Date: Sep 09, 2013
From: Ottawa Xpress
Message: Meal at Ceylonta is best enjoyed!
Date: Sep 09, 2013
From: Ottawa Citizen
Message: Ceylonta is the buffet of grand flavours!
Date: Sep 09, 2013
From: Ottawa Xpress
Message: “Best South Asian Restaurant in Ottawa” – Elected in 2008/09
Date: Sep 09, 2013
From: Kirthika
Message: This is an amazing restaurant!
Date: Sep 09, 2013
From: Fouzia
Message: Best South Indian food I ever had!
Date: Sep 09, 2013
From: Ottawa Xpress
Message: Meal at Ceylonta is best enjoyed!
Date: Sep 09, 2013
From: Ottawa Citizen
Message: Ceylonta is the buffet of grand flavours!
Date: Sep 09, 2013
From: Ottawa Xpress
Message: “Best South Asian Restaurant in Ottawa” – Elected in 2008/09
Date: Sep 09, 2013
From: Kirthika
Message: This is an amazing restaurant!
Date: Sep 09, 2013
From: Fouzia
Message: Best South Indian food I ever had!
Date: May 10, 2013
From: Anne
Message: Delicious Sri Lankan Food! Authentic cuisine.
Date: May 10, 2013
From: Hasan
Message: Awesome food. We have been there couple of times dosa sambhar and their special chutney are awesome. Also the papaddum and the house special tea is fantastic. Buffet too is great. Staff is very warm and friendly.
Date: May 10, 2013
From: Jenn
Message: I love this restaurant! The Sri Lankan and South-Indian food found here is by far better than other Indian restaurants in the Ottawa.
Date: May 10, 2013
From: Poppa B
Message: The staff are fantastic and the food is delicious!
Date: Apr 20, 2013
From: Derek
Message: Been many times. Always a treat.
Anne Desbrisay (ottawa citizen)
Fire In The Belly
Message: If not for the neon palm tree budding from the waist-high snow out front, you’d not likely find this new restaurant, as it is set back from the buildings that surround it. There is a sign, but there are so many signs in this section of Carling Avenue that you might not notice it. You do notice the tree. www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/features/diningout/s
From: Anne DesBrisay (ottawa citizen)
Capital Dining
We arrive shortly after one o’clock to find a queue at the front door. Other people appear from the direction of the dining room and form behind us. It takes a few minutes to register that this is a procession for the cash register: diners clutching ten-dollar bills to cover the $8.95 cost of the daily lunch buffer. A women leaves the line and returns with one more hastily snatched urid dahl “donut” from the buffer table the corner.
“They’re pretty addictive,” she says, smiling sheepishy.
Ceylonta’s owner, Ranjan Thana, apologizes for the wait and suggests that the buffet looked better at 11/30. He’s probably right. The tablecloth is splattered, the hoppers are congealed, the naan is rock hard. In the time it takes us to order a mango lassi and a Kingfisher beer, though, things have been tidied and the buffer replenished.
Here and there in these plain rooms and on the Ceylonta menu, there is information about Sri Lankan food. A photo is framed in Ceylon spices – coriander, cumin, fenugreek, cardamom, curry leaves, fennel seed, cinnamon bark, black mustard seed. We look, we read, and then we head to the food to further out education.
Fresh string hoppers have just arrived. So has a basket of just-fried urid dahl cakes. We load up on these addictive donuts and the accompanying coconut sambal, along with the chewy, spicy, fried sprates (sardines). There is a plain, lightly perfumed salad of red onion and tomato onto which we dollop some yogurt. Then basmati rice and the various curries. There is a “black” curry of lentils and another one of chickpeas, splendid with cardamom and fennel, the dark colour achieved by the Sri Lankan technique of fast-roasting herbs and spices to dark brown before grinding them. And then a “red” curry of beef and potatoes (lots of chillies, fewer spices). For a usually meek, please-all buffer – as buffets tend to be – these dishes approach authentic in the scorching department. The milder curries – one of whole-leaf spinach and one of curried squash – are splendid with onion, fennel seed, and cardamom pods, and sweet with grated coconut.
Accompanying the curries are spicy condiment: marinated dried red chillies, the mild and nubbly coconut, their flavour heightened with chilli, onion, salt, and lime.
If you stick with the dark meat and avoid the breast, the tandoori chicken is moist, falling-off-the-bone tender, and dripping with its reddened marinade.
A la carte, you can order the dosai: platter-sized south Indian crepes, wrapped around a filling of curried goat. There is sambar (a spicy lentil and vegetable soup), which you can ladle on top if you with. For dessert, there is tapioca pudding, sweet with coconut milk, and there are the gulab jamun dumplings, very moist, infused with the sweet, aromatic syrup that surrounds them.
Ceylonta isn’t much from the curb. But inside, there is the warmth of gracious service, the grand flavours of good food, and a bill that is remarkably fair.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=nTJPcOO8bz8C&pg=PA17&sour
From: Sarah Cappeliez
Voir
La cuisine sri-lankaise chez Ceylonta se découvre par les sens: épices et couleurs des plats éveillent l’odorat, la vue, mais surtout, le goût!
http://www.voir.ca/publishing/article.aspx?zone=3§ion