Cinnamon Red

There’s one word that perfectly sums up Cinnamon Red in Colombo and that’s cool.

It’s a city hotel with a seriously funky vibe, from the decor to the rooftop bar this place has got it going on, located in Colombo 7 within easy reach of a few good restaurants, the train station, the lively Fort area as well as some of Colombo’s best sights.

The concept at Cinnamon Red is ‘lean luxury’ but luckily this didn’t seem to apply to the vegan food, as well as being a pretty cool place to stay, the vegan food on offer was plentiful and tasty.

So that’s a cool, city hotel within in easy reach of everything we needed plus a good helping of vegan food, you can probably tell already that we were very pleased to be spending our last night in Sri Lanka at Cinnamon Red.

The Vegan Food:

After a very sound night’s sleep, we headed down to ‘Flavoured’ for breakfast where the buffet was full of all sorts of vegan friendly foods, we loved the fact there was fresh king coconut water on offer, such a lovely way to start the day with one of nature’s most hydrating drinks (much needed in the city heat).

There was a good selection of fruit and we were happy to see soya milk on offer meaning that we could have cereal which is always a real taste of home.

But the real magic was to be found in the selection of traditional Sri Lankan foods on offer.

We ate freshly cooked hoppers and dahl with ‘pol sambol’ (fresh spicy coconut chutney), coconut ‘mallum’ (fresh coconut salad) and spicy ‘lunumiris’ (a spicy chilli laden paste).

The coconut mallum had the most amazing flavour, dry spiced, freshly grated coconut that was full of aromatic curry leaves, black mustard seeds, cinnamon and shallots. The lunumiris was spicy with fresh chilli and we think there was a bit of ginger thrown in, either way it was gorgeous.

And what traditional vegan Sri Lankan breakfast is complete with out string hoppers?

We enjoyed wonderfully creamy curries laden with coconut milk, gigantic cashew nuts and green peas, plus a tasty a chick pea masala – the perfect accompaniment to light string hoppers and indulgent ‘kiribath’ (milk rice) made with more of that wonderfully rich coconut milk. The cashews were so soft that they literally melted in your mouth, a sensation that is incredibly soothing (as well as really yummy!).

There were also idly, dosas, and a few western breakfast staples such as baked beans and tomatoes.

The Vegan Essentials

As if our room wasn’t cool enough there was a giant ‘happy’ mural above the bed and there wasn’t a feather in sight (which made us vegan travellers even happier!).

The Vegan Food Quest Verdict

Check into Cinnamon Red for a cool city centre stay where ‘lean luxury’ certainly does’t mean lean vegan eating, you can feast on local Sri Lankan delights at breakfast and get a great taste for how vegan friendly Sri Lankan food is.

We were guests of Cinnamon Red but please rest assured that their generosity in hosting us didn’t influence our views

Cinnamon Red
59 Ananda Coomaraswamy Mawatha
Colombo 03
Sri Lanka

Telephone: +94 112 145145
Email: infored@cinnamonhotels.com
Cost From: £70 / $105 per night (May 2015)