Café Mozaic is usually our late night hang out after partying in Ice, but this visit here was on account of the Sri Lankan Food Festival hosted by Vivanta by Taj- MG Road, Bangalore. For this food fest, along with Executive Chef Ramasamy Selvaraju, there were chefs from Vivanta by Taj-Bentota, Sri Lanka and their culinary team – to curate an authentic feast fit for the kings. Café Mozaic is a beautiful venue with indoor and pool side seating, we sat outside enjoying the cool Bangalore weather. Our evening started with some fantastic performances by Sri Lankan folk dancers from the famed Budawatta Dance Troupe – beautiful, elegant and fiery.

The food festival is served on the buffet with a balanced selection of offerings – there were fresh sea food, live counters, kiosks for hoppers, tender coconut stalls and more. Another notable thing we noticed on the menu was the kind of vegetarian varieties available – homely recipes executed perfectly with distinct flavoring and tantalizingly spicy. The years of colonization has led the Sri Lankan cuisine to imbibe influences from other cultures, but beautifully adapted as their own unique kind of food. And our evening was a testament to this unpretentious cuisine.

Banana blossom Moju (fried) was one of the delicacies we had at the food festival – this was suitably spiced and served as an appetizer. While in Bengal banana blossom is eaten commonly as well, the kind of preparation was entirely different – very tasty and a must try. The cashew garlic curry was another surprise – a rather simple dish with such a confluence of spices. The deviled fish was one of the Chef’s personal recommendation. Sri Lanka has a lot of different deviled dishes – deep fried, saucy topped with onions and peppers. This was perfect with steamed rice! The Pumpkin Kalupol was another well-made dish tempered with roasted spices and coconut. Again, good to eat with steamed rice

Kottu or kottu roti is also a popular Sri Lankan street food dish – and was set up in one of the live counters for vegetarian and chicken mixed with leek, onions, cabbage. This would be one of the must-try dishes from the festival, can be eaten just by themselves or with a curry sauce. The fried sea food counters was quite popular amongst the patrons, and these are best eaten with red rice. The hoppers made fresh on the small woks, just like appams! We tried the plain hoppers and egg hoppers with Elumas ala curry (mutton curry with potatoes) – very good combination.

The dessert selections was inside, a large variety array. Among the many desserts that we tried, a few were very different, and delicious. Kokis are deep fried crispy flour café which are nice to munch on. Coconut Wandu was perhaps our favorite that evening – lovely texture and hit the sweet spot just right! This feast is until 15^th August, at Café Mozaic, available for dinner between 7-11pm, and is priced at 1500++.

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