Vinya Garden is the kitchen of Seconds Colombo, at No. 44 Kirulapone Avenue in Colombo 5. One door opens onto the garden. The other opens onto the street, where the scooters wait.
We cook lamprais and kottu the way they're cooked at home when someone has time, and we fire pizza in a wood oven at the back of the same kitchen. Sri Lankan where it should be, not where it shouldn't. Then we pack it so it arrives the way it left.
No MSG is used in any dish. The bone broth under the flaming kottu sauce is simmered for six hours, in-house, every morning. Bread, godamba roti and pizza bases are made here from flour. Free-range chicken is broken down in the kitchen, not bought pre-cut. Every dish is cooked when you order it.
She's a sunbird, green and orange. She was here before the building was, and she stayed through the concrete. We named the kitchen after her.
The garden was replanted around what she already used. It seemed only fair.
