Avartana

Avartana is the fine-dining restaurant to know about at ITC Ratnadipa, the large new hotel between the Indian Ocean and Beira Lake beside the Galle Face precinct. It belongs to ITC Hotels' Avartana brand of progressive South Indian restaurants, and the Colombo outlet is described as reinventing southern Indian cuisine with a touch of local flair.

Across the brand, Avartana serves tasting menus of between seven and thirteen courses, each paired with spiced cocktails, and the restaurants are known for their soft lighting, light wood, copper and amber accents, banana leaf motifs and rustic earthenware. The menu format in Colombo is best confirmed when you book, but the style is a long, unhurried dinner in which familiar South Indian flavours are presented in new ways. It suits couples, food lovers and anyone marking a special occasion.

The restaurant opens for dinner only, from 6.30pm to 11pm. Reservations can be made through ITC Hotels by email or by phone, and booking ahead is the sensible approach for a tasting-menu restaurant of this kind. Allow two to three hours for the full experience.

ITC Ratnadipa itself is worth exploring before or after dinner. The hotel has 352 rooms and suites, a choice of restaurants including Peshawri for Northwest Frontier cooking and Yi Jing for Chinese food, and bars such as the Silvertips Bar, which specialises in Ceylon teas and high tea. Its infinity pools sit on a Sky Bridge about 100 metres up, with views over the ocean and Beira Lake, and the hotel holds LEED Platinum certification. Other facilities include the Kaya Kalp spa with Ayurvedic treatments, Jala Anganaya, a pool bar on the fourth level, The Islander, a seafood restaurant with a rooftop bar, and Nutmeg, a bakery.

The hotel's address is 21 Galle Face Centre Road in Colombo 1, close to Galle Face Green, so an evening walk on the Green before dinner is easy to arrange. Gangaramaya Temple is about 1.7 kilometres away, and the Fort district, with the Old Dutch Hospital and Ministry of Crab, is a short ride north if you want to compare two very different takes on regional seafood and spice.