Plain tea at Patty Mahaththaya's: A review

Food review blogs are popping up like mushrooms these days. For example, my friend Savindri (or @PhuckYou_ as some of you may know her) started this Tuk-Tuk Thosai thing. She’s got some really good stuff there, you should certainly pay it a visit. But the problem with the food she reviews is that almost all of them cost a hell of a lot more than what a person with a limited budget can afford. Who’d want to have a cup of tea that costs several hundreds of rupees? So I thought of reviewing something which is affordable to everyone of you: the plain tea at Patty Mahaththaya’s Kade.

Patty Mahaththya’s Kade isn’t situated in Colombo. You have to travel down south to Matara to taste its delicious plain tea. Well, it’s not in the city of Matara either; you have to travel 18 km in the Hakmana road to Kirinda. Then You turn right from the Getamanne junction towards Beliatte and travel 4 km until you come to the Hettiyawala junction. From there it’s just a 500m walk along the Karatota road and you’ll find the Patty Mahaththya’s Kade, concealed to rest of the world.

There’s no dedicated parking, so you’ll have to park your vehicle in the not-so-wide gravel road. It isn’t much of a problem, coz not more than one vehicle, and that too a three-wheeler, happen to travel on this road even in the busiest hour. Just a heads up.

Now for the real stuff, the review. 😀

Patty Mahaththaya’s Kade is built with a mix of post-modern look and a dark theme. Dark I say, because the interior is mostly dark. When you first see the Kade you’ll think it’s just another old and shabby boutique, but it’s just the theme.

Plain tea at Patty Mahaththaya's

When you order a plain tea it will come to your hands in a split second, unlike in most high-class cafes. The secret to this swiftness is that they already have plain tea prepared in a kettle during the day, so all they have to do is pour some to a cup. The cup of plain tea smelled of ginger. When I asked the waiter (actually, both the waiter and the cashier of the shop are none other than the owner himself, Patty Mahaththaya) what tea this cup was brewed with, he said it’s some kind of a loose tea. The flavour is unique to Patty Mahaththaya’s. It was a bit too much sweet; I guess that’s due to too much sugar.

A cup of plain tea here costs only 10 rupees, so it won’t make much impact on your pocket. It was even cheaper a few years back, but Patty Mahaththaya had to increase the prices because of the high tea and sugar prices.

Overall rating: 9/10

Why only 9? Because it was a bit too sugary. A little less sugar and I’d have given 10 out of 10.

So that’s the first food review to be featured in this blog. Not likely that there’d be another. Even so, don’t forget to leave a comment about my review and where I should improve on. 🙂