Barefoot Garden Café

The Barefoot Garden Café is one of Colombo's best-loved places to sit and do very little. It occupies the garden courtyard behind the Barefoot shop on Galle Road, the design store founded by Barbara Sansoni in 1964, and the café describes itself as hidden in the middle of the city's hustle and bustle. It began in the early 1990s as a simple stand selling lime juice and fish patties, and it has grown into a full restaurant and event space.

The menu covers the staples you would want on a hot afternoon: tea, coffee, sandwiches, fresh juices and milkshakes, along with wine and beer. Daily specials are chalked on a blackboard and posted on the café's Instagram, and examples have included black pork curry and spinach quiche.

Sunday is the day to come if you like music. The café's Sunday Jazz series has been running for around 20 years, with a regular quartet of Revel Crake, Dilrukshi Sirimanne, Ray Gomez and Christopher Prins, sometimes joined by Jerome Speldewinde. The garden also hosts book and art launches, fashion shows, weddings and birthday parties, and the café offers catering in both international and local cuisine.

The café opens from 10am to 7pm Monday to Saturday and from 10am to 6pm on Sundays and poya days. Reservations can be made by WhatsApp or through the shop's phone line, and booking is a good idea for Sunday jazz. The setting suits solo travellers with a book, friends catching up and families who want somewhere calm away from the traffic of Galle Road.

A visit combines naturally with browsing the Barefoot shop at the front, which sells handwoven sarongs, shawls, bags, toys, household linen and books, and with the Barefoot Gallery. Because it is open on Sundays, when the Pettah markets are closed, it is a useful fixed point for a Sunday in Colombo. The Gallery Café and Paradise Road's Galle Road shop are both in Colombo 3, a short tuk-tuk ride away, if you want to continue exploring the city's design scene. If you are heading south later in your trip, Barefoot also has a store at 41 Pedler Street inside Galle Fort, open on the same days.