Really nice new place for Sri Lankan food. Local little place with warmth and yummy hoppers!…read more There's also a bar on the side, serving cocktails, wine, beer and tequila shots^^ Has a great family feel to it and has plenty of parking just a 1 min walk up the path. Highly recommend it if enjoy Sri Lankan food!

Being recommended to this restaurant by our friends, we went in with high expectations and we were…read moreglad to be there. We ordered the set lunch menu and Hoppers with fish curry (spicy). The lunch menu was a good option to try a little of everything and Devils chicken was tasty. The star however was "Hoppers" and fish curry. It was amazing to say the least. The beautiful taste of fish curry and the Hopper to balance it was soul warming. Loved every bit of it. Service was top notch as well. Thank you.

Amazing food. Visited two times and tried Deviled chicken, pork curry with fried rice and kottu…read more Also, starters, cutlets and rolls. Spicy and quite delicious. I would go there again and recommend to anyone.

4.5. The White Elephant is a 15 minute walk from West Footscray station and the Whitten Oval. It…read moreis nestled among some Indian restaurants and grocery stores and not far from some trendy, wine bars and eateries. It stands out because it is authentic and serves freshly prepared Sr Lanka cuisine. The decor and setting is clean and understated with quiet background music playing. It's a real family business, with Mum, the chef and two daughters in front of house. My partner and I had coconut prawns as an entree which was beautifully presented on a board, sprinkled with coconut and accompanied by an interesting, smooth, mayonnaise based sauce. The prawns were perfectly cooked in their shell. Onto the mains. The lamb curry infused with exotic spices and coconut milk melted in your mouth. It went very well with the yellow rice dish, cooked with saffron, coconut milk and many subtle spices, interspersed with cashews. Their recommended vegetable dish was the eggplant moju; a twice cooked eggplant sauteed in a blend of spices, cinnamon and chilli pieces, thoughtfully allowing those like us who prefer a mild chilli to separate out the chilli pieces. 'Mum' cooks fish every night and so she brought out a lovely fish dish we had not ordered. Again, perfectly cooked and with really interesting, subtle spices. We also enjoyed the lentil curry, as an accompaniment. Arriving hungry was a bonus. A couple could order less than all this and have a really interesting, balanced meal for around $50 only. It's worth noting there are some really good choices for vegetarians here. For many , good food deserves good wine. There are various beers and liquor available but there is not yet a wine list on the menu. When this is soon finalised, it will allow those who want to enjoy an accompanying wine with such interesting food to complement the food. This small, family, authentic Sri Lankan restaurant is well worth seeking out and will continue to improve after only nine months since opening. The White Elephant is strongly recommended. Our thanks to the restaurant for their kind invitation to dine here.

I can't believe it's taken this long for a next level Sri Lankan restaurant to open up in…read moreFootscray. I'm not talking some takeaway joint with a few seats, but a real sit down table service restaurant with a lovely down to earth family up for a chat, although it's getting very busy so those moments are getting rare. Be forewarned! If you want fast food head to the notorious KFC down the road. This is genuine Lankan cooking on six burners from scratch and fresh. It takes over an hour so don't whine and whinge if it takes time. Should you complain after being told how long it would take look out. Jess gives as good as she gets. No bullshitting the staff, they can sniff out any tricks patrons try and pull. Oh, by the way the food is worth waiting for. I recommend the devilled beef, curry chicken, eggplant and lentils. I ate my way around Sri Lanka in 2009 (pre gentrification) and this is the real deal with a youthful twist of sass.

This is my favorite restaurant in Coburg and I have been here often because it is an easy walk from…read morehome. I have explored their extensive menu of traditional Indian, Malaysian and Sri Lankan dishes trying everything from the usual curries to their venison biryani and haleem, a mutton dish that is part of ancient cuisine of Hyderabad. Nila's specialty is roti, dosai and other types of Indian pancakes that are cooked at the front of the restaurant adding to charm and authenticity of the dinning experience. Their ghee dosai is spectacular creation with a very large thin rice pancake formed into a cone on which a second pancake is impaled like the brim of a hat. My favorite is their Murthaba Ayam, a stuffed roti filled with chicken, onion, tomato, chili, fresh egg and spices. Nila offers great food at affordable prices making it a favorite for students and families. The atmosphere is relaxed and informal and the décor basic with Bollywood music videos playing on two televisions, except during the cricket season when there is cricket, of course, and during Ramadan when they are switched off. The restaurant is halal and during Ramadan has an all you can eat buffet. Upstairs there is a function room for catered parties. All the food is halal and there is an extensive vegetarian selection.

"go on, treat yourself to the goat" is a fairly common saying among my housemates. The goat masala…read morehere is off the hook good. In fact everything's awesome here from the awesome range of cheap curries, dosai to the roti that's made out the front of the restaurant while you watch. The staff here are ridiculously friendly! To the point where I think the guy who owns it was trying to get us to go to the northern territory with him, in a friendly way, not the creepy way! This place has a great tacky charm, and in my mind is the best Indian/Malaysian in the area by a long shot. It's well worth braving the stupid Sydney rd traffic to try this place out.

Their food is excellent and so reasonably priced. Hoppers on a Friday is an all time favorite. Not…read moreto mention the incredibly friendly service - the owners are so lovely and will do anything they can to make you happy.

I will not recommend this place for dine-in ; take always could be fine as we had to wait for 15…read moreminutes for the menus. Half of the menu items were not available which are normally popular at zero Lankan restaurants. We ordered cutlets and Hoppers for the appetisers , Currybpack for the mains. The waitress mentioned that the hoppers will take some time may be around 15-20 minutes and we were like fine with us but get us the cutlets and the mains together. After 10 minutes with no drinks order or water , waitress came to us and told us that the cutlets are not available but she can give us the fish rolls, we were okay with it. Nothing came in next 30 minutes and the staff was packing the fish rolls for take always and we were sitting there without drinks and water! My patience was giving up and went to the counter and told the staff to cancel our order as we have not got anything and then she said the curry pack is ready and the fish rolls too and we said get them , she again served us the fish rolls and said curry pack with take 15 minutes and hoppers with take another 20 minutes but they already served hoppers to the table which came after us! And we just had the rolls and paid more than we were expecting !! The cutlets we order initially was of 80 cents and the fish rolls were $3 each! The fish rolls were very tasty! I will just say the food is good and the service is pathetic! If they were busy they would have told us to come another time as we called up to make the booking . I may prefer to do a take away but never dine in! The food gets 5 stars but service doesn't deserve anything!!

Totally authentic Sri Lankan. So good! Their buffet is such good value and a great way to introduce…read moreyourself to Sri Lankan if you're not familiar with all of the dishes. Don't forget to order the coconut roti. Yummm!

I saw some amazing reviews for Rook when searching for food on some other platform. Room looked…read morelike it won some awards in some dessert wars as well! We were on our way back to the Avalon airport from a Melbourne and needed a stop in between to spend some time before our flight. Rook is located a little out of the way, but it was perfect cause it's in a little small where we could kill some time.. and parking, which beats trying to find parking in Melbourne's CBD for food. I've never had Sri Lankan food before so this was definitely an adventure! The restaurant is nice, very clean and has a semi opened kitchen, so you can watch where all the magic happens. There's a good selection of teas from Sri Lanka and a nice selection of coffees as well! I loved the tea pot setup and had some amazing sour sop tea that was fragrant and yummy. For food I opted for the Hoppers with an addition of Lamb Curry. The bowl made out of coconut was pretty cool, like a very light coconut crisp. The lamb curry was flavorful and delicious, lamb tender! You pour and mix everything into the coconut bowl and eat from there! I wish there was a little more instruction to the first timers but alas we had to ask them how they would recommend eating the Hoppers and the String Hoppers. I loved every bite, just the portions were a little on the small side for the price! Everyone seemed to enjoy the food though and the servers were friendly and accommodating! The owner came out to help us as well and he was very nice, even gave us photo cards to help us decide on food! Would definitely come back to try dessert next time we're in Australia and would recommend this restaurant for those of you who want to try something new! We also wished our dishes came out hotter cause they were just room temperature, but flavors were spot on!

From the owner: Traditional and fused Sri Lankan Cuisine, Coffee, Tea, Spices, Chocolate, Catering and eventsread more

This was the closest I've come to having Sri Lankan food like I did when growing up there. The food…read morewas beautifully authentic. We started with the chicken pan rolls which were delightful and really took me back to my youth, when I used to crave them on a daily basis. We ordered the Chicken curry and the Dhal curry with some hoppers and Godamba Roti. The hoppers were very delicate and delicious. The Chicken curry was as I remembered it growing up - with classical spice notes and flavour. The Dhal was outstanding. All the dishes were served in clay pots which adds to the flavour (so I think). To top it off the service was excellent with our hosts being very attentive and helpful. It was one of the few times I have seen "Sri Lankan Hospitality" in action. Highly recommended!

Food is good. Really tasty and authentic. Wonderful flavor and we enjoyed them. However, the place…read morewas severely under staffed and it took a while to get our orders, then the drinks were missed, foods were slow to come. Like over 40 minutes between dishes.... Other tables were still not cleaned after customers left over 1 hour ago. Matter of fact, none of the tables are cleaned after customers left. Maybe they need to hire more people on Wednesday evening, dinner time.

I had heard so much about this place and was heavily disappointed. My friend took me here for a…read morebirthday treat on a Friday afternoon. Before we went in, we were thinking about what we would like to order and were thinking about trying some of the Sri Lankan delicacies such as hoppers, fish curry and their kottu roti. However, Friday's are buffet lunches and we were told there was no a la carte menu. It is 20 per person. We grabbed a plate each and quickly put them down as the plates had dried food stuck on them. We quickly exchanged our plates and then started our round. Options included mild chicken curry, soy curry, chicken biryani, plain rice, lamb curry, steamed fish, spring rolls, garlic bread, pappadum, raita, coconut sambol, lentils, green beans, and eggplant. For dessert, there was frog green sago pudding and caramel custard. Both of us tried everything and despised everything. The chicken biryani had stale rice. The tandoori chicken meat was too tough and dry. The lamb curry was so spicy that all it tasted like was chilli and nothing else with extremely tough lamb. The coconut sambol was ok. The garlic bread was not housemade and neither were the veggie spring rolls as they looked like they were supermarket produced. the fish was ok but it was in this weird white oily liquid. The caramel custard was bitter (maybe the caramel was over done). We left very disappointed. all food was served below room temperature. My friend said she was worried about the hygiene and food safety.

One of the really best Sri Lankan restaurants, you don't find restaurants this good often. Price is…read moreone step towards the middle higher end and food full of flavor. Haven't tried everything for this restaurant yet, however Lamb madras curry is definitely a whackbang of garlic and spices. Honestly not a big fan of Indian food, however this restaurant is something special that can lurk me into it with the food smell spreading across the street. Service is really great, polite and efficient.

Decent food, friendly staff and good set of vegetarian options. Visited couple of times during a…read morebusiness trip and was able to try few different types of dishes