Sri Lankan Food Festival at Maize and Malt

Maize and Malt doesn’t ease you in. Whitefield’s most alive address, a craft brewery, cocktail bar and rooftop that seats a thousand, was built for scale and carries it without strain. Walkover bridges, winding pathways, and a wavy pool that catches evening light without asking for attention. The Speakeasy sits indoors, close and unhurried, the kind of setup where conversations find their own pace. Up top, the Rooftop Island Bar opens everything out.

The taps pour craft beer with the confidence of people who know exactly what they’re doing. The cocktail menu moves with similar assurance, with drinks built with enough imagination to make choosing outside beer feel like a genuine option rather than a fallback.

What keeps Maize & Malt interesting beyond its size is the people running it. Pop-ups, food festivals, kitchen takeovers. The place stays curious, and its regulars stay curious with it. Keshav, General Manager, sat with us long enough to make the evening feel less like a preview and more like a conversation. He knows this place inside out and it shows.

This February, that curiosity turned its attention to Sri Lanka. A Sri Lankan table came to Maize & Malt, and it came with Priya Bala.

Bala, a journalist, restaurant critic of over a decade, and author of Start Up Your Restaurant, Secret Sauce and Bazaar Bites, is one of India’s most trusted food voices. She didn’t put this menu together from a desk. She cooked it. We later learned she had been there since early evening, overseeing the kitchen and every arrangement with the quiet authority of someone who takes no shortcuts. She addressed the small gathering warmly, walking us through Sri Lanka and her curated offerings with the ease of someone who has lived inside this food for a long time. Then she left, as people who have given everything to a meal tend to do. The crown is hers, entirely, for bringing Sri Lankan flavours to Bangalore’s doorstep.

I came as a vegetarian, for reasons I’ll keep to myself. And the table held its own without complaint. Banana flower cutlets arrived crisp and sure of themselves. The bittergourd sambol made its case with heat and didn’t wait to be thanked for it. Seeni sambol buns, sweet caramelised onion, warm from the kitchen, were gone before a decision was properly made. The mushroom patties tasted of a street corner that has been quietly getting this right for years.

The mains carried the same ease. Idiappam kotthu pulled you in slowly, warm and textured. The pandan-scented yellow rice, with its accompaniments, brought the table to a kind of focused quiet that needed no comment. The meat fare, devilled chicken, slow-cooked black pork, and fish cutlets drew the sort of expressions around me that said everything a review needs to know. I skipped it. The faces of those who didn’t were testimony enough.

Dessert is where a cuisine tells the truth. Watalappam, silky, jaggery-coated, spiced without showing off, stayed with you. The Love Cake closed things on its own terms, slowly and without fuss.

A Sri Lankan table at Maize & Malt runs through the 17th of March. Priya Bala cooked it real. The rest is yours to find out. Follow the story @theglitzmedia.

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