The Steuart by Citrus

The old ‘Steuart House’ that housed the head-quarters of George Steuart & Co. Ltd, which was one of the country's oldest mercantile institution, was transformed into a business hotel by adding a pleasant essence of the Scottish ways.

On a casual Friday evening after work, my friends and I decided to go for a ‘Friday night dinner’ at The Steuart. Since none of us had visited here before, we asked around and checked up on some online reviews which gave us quite a bit of mixed reviews. Despite all that, we gave The Steuart the benefit of the doubt and decided to try them out.

Things looked promising as we entered, the place looked welcoming and pleasant. There were 8 of us, and we couldn’t get a table and they served us food at the waiting area. This is when things started to turn lopsided for us.

About the stewards, the steward assigned for us, didn’t simply have the patience to get the order of 8 people. He was walking around and serving other tables while he was taking ours. And when finally we got our food, the steward didn’t know what he brought. My Muslim friend almost ate pork because they said the club sandwiches were seafood. We had to take the ham out and teach them what ham is, because they kept denying that 'it was ham and not sea food'.

This might be a personal preference but to me I felt as if there was no seasoning in the food at all; especially in the Spaghetti Bolognese (LKR800) and in the Spaghetti Carbonara (LKR850). We only managed to find three tiny pieces of chicken in the Spaghetti Carbonara with smoked chicken. To us it felt as if all most all the food were pre-cooked and microwaved before they were served, because the plates were warm but the food was not warm and fresh. And not to mention the very odd slice of garlic bread that was served with the pastas. Pasta and garlic bread together? That neither sounded good nor tasted good as it was dry as well.

We also ordered 1 Traditional Fish and Chips (LKR1250) and also a Slippy Sloppy Lasagna (LKR900) The fish was very bland, that we just had few bites of it. The chips were okay. The lasagna wasn’t ‘slippy sloppy’ at all. It looked okay but it also tasted very bland.

The only enjoyable part of the dinner was the Chocolate Fudge Brownie (with ice-cream) which was LKR555. I personally won't recommend The Steuart to anyone, especially regarding food and service because there was nothing considerable to visit them again for us. I might consider visiting them again on a day they have better/new stewards and definitely new cook.

1.3/5

Harinay