After our “brief” (yeah let’s call it that) hiatus we come to you, only 3 weeks later,  with the goods. As with anything in life, there’s good AND bad. This, our lovely children, was one such bad experience but we learn and we grow ..? right ?

Shall we lay down the facts then ?

1. We got paychecks
2. We want to give in
3. We realize we owe a lot of people, money
4. We can’t afford it
5. We open UberEats nevertheless (sozz boujee habits)
6. We go on deals, we succumb to what we now call…..lousy Chinese

Chinese Dragon Cafe, we’ll call it CDC for short, lured us in with their Fried rice with veg and egg, 2 buffalo wings , 2 veg spring rolls, sweet corn with veg and egg combo but left us heart broken like a 3rd grade school crush.

Kick starting with the spring rolls which were veg meaning we HAD to make our resident vegetarian (Kavi) try and give us her feedback. She said and we quote, “this is very crispy but very bland at the same time”. So there you go, we’ll leave a pro vegetable connoisseur to speak on her forte.

The only savior of the whole combo – the sweet corn soup with veg and egg was glorious. Thick, filling and very yummy. Granted, it would’ve been better if it were hotter (like all things in life) we can NOT complain. With bits of corn, egg AND chicken (which wasn’t in the description, we love a good surprise)! Got our motors running, really. This is the direction y’all need to head in CDC, take notes.

The veg and egg fried rice followed the similar pattern of being severely underwhelming. We’d eat this, don’t get us wrong cause hello, necessity knows no laws – even if it means having to  eat this criminal of a DRY fried rice. We tried our best to salvage the situation by even pouring some soup into the rice but it couldn’t be revived

The buffalo wings tasted (to put it lightly) like dry fish and hey, with a good pol sambol or a kiri hodi we would’ve enjoyed this bad (like not in a cool way) boy.

There was flavour..ish but we can’t see ourselves getting excited about this, even on days we eat Keells cheese & onion bread (which might we add, is a gem) dipped in cup noodles. 

For context + the lols:

With that our ratings are as follows;

• Value for money – 7/10
• Taste and appeal – 4/10 (purely cause of that soup)
• If it fill us up – 7/10
• Chances of us having it again – 2/10

You can find Chinese Dragon Cafe on UberEats or PickMe foods or arrange direct delivery via Instagram. 

Quick disclaimer: this is OUR opinion and could vary from yours based on the outlet/chef/day. We’d order from CDC again, maybe not this combo but definitely that soup. If you do try this, hope it’s better (we really are idealistic parents – wanting what’s best for our children and what not ). 

Stay safe because being broke is better than contracting an unwanted virus. And with that clearly very informative and original parting note, we part. Stay broke and hungry till next Thursday ( or Friday because we are not reliable, evidently). 

By Maheli Sri Gintotage & Sakuni Wisanperuma

The post ACTUALLY BROKE REVIEW #2 BY MAHELI SRI GINTOTAGE & SAKUNI WISANPERUMA appeared first on ChoKoLAAte Blog.

Let’s lay down the facts:

1. You are broke
2.  You want biriyani
3. You think, “can I afford biriyani?”
4. Why yes, yes you can
5. How you ask?…Keep reading

250 Rupee biriyani runs on a simple concept. You pay 250 rupees and in return you get a large portion of biriyani, a chicken leg, something along the lines of – let’s call it raita and the saviour of it all, a cup of gravy we wished we had more of. Their other options include getting Chicken 65 (150 LKR) and a boiled egg (40 LKR) to the usual 250 rupee combo .

Starting off with the no nonsense biriyani. It played it’s part well and was more flavourful than some of the exorbitantly priced biriyanis we had back in our boujee days (a moment of silence please). Not gonna lie at first glance it did look dry, but that was not the case at all, that biriyani is a catfish but in a good way. It was perfectly moist ( yes we said THAT), making the godfather of biriyani pretty proud.

Moving on to the protein aspect, the usual chicken leg was rather underwhelming, it was like isso wadé minus the onion-lime topping situation . It lacked flavour and unfortunately was only  a notch better than plain, old boiled chicken. On the other day the chicken 65 was god sent and was well worth the extra 150 LKR. The flavor profile, texture, overall taste and even the appeal was much better in the Chicken 65. Our only disappointment was that 3 of those juicy boys weren’t enough, but for 150 LKR, we really can’t complain.

The gravy was what brought the whole thing together. It was a hero without a cape, really. We would drink this in bucketfuls with paper straws heheh. However, the biriyani to gravy ratio was  off for our hodi-loving selves, we definitely did wish we had more gravy .

Pretty self explanatory, the “raita” was just onions with morsels of green chilli mixed with a minimum amount of curd/yogurt making it quite dry.

With that our ratings are as follows; 

• Value for money – 10/10
• Taste and appeal – 7/10
• If it fill us up – 10/10
• Chances of us having it again – 8/10

You can find 250 rupee biriyani on instagram @250rupeebiriyani, contact them directly at +94777585250  or check them out on PickMe and Uber Eats. One suggestion would be to expand their standard 5km only delivery radius, since we had to pick me flash the food to our office. 

We would definitely order from 250 rupee biriyani again, broke or not but realistically broke .  

If you try this out, do let your Gods know children (the Gods being us). Stay broke and hungry till next Thursday (or Friday because we are not reliable, evidently) 

By Maheli Sri Gintotage & Sakuni Wisanperuma

The post ACTUALLY broke – review #1 by Maheli Sri Gintotage & Sakuni Wisanperuma appeared first on ChoKoLAAte Blog.

Desperation struck, 2 weeks after being back at office post lockdown when we were cumulatively down to our last 500 bucks after having led a boujee lifestyle we couldn’t for the life of our wildest dreams, afford. 

Proof: 

Questions such as “eh, what are we eating for lunch? We can’t order from pickme noh?” soon started rising, Uber eats kept saying they missed us – devil’s work. Exercising a lot of restraint and with the sheer need to hold on to the ever shattering dignity by not begging on the streets of Rajagiriya, we welcomed the unapologetic ACTUALLY broke life.

Now, let us tell you what differentiates us from other “budget” blogs. When we tell you we’re ACTUALLY broke, we are ACTUALLY broke. We are not gonna tell you a place is budget friendly when it actually costs you 1000 LKR, because fellow broke friends, dogs, homies, we don’t have 1000 LKR with us to begin with.

This doesn’t mean that we are going to compensate what our boujee palettes are accustomed to, for the lack of printed peacocks. Join us on our hunt for striking balance between wanting caviar and very sadly only having a budget of 250 to feed two individuals.

ACTUALLY broke isn’t going to be biased. We won’t overpromise and underdeliver, this is not the GOT series finale. If it’s bad, you WILL know. We are not sponsored unless…hit us up

We will be rating the food  based on 4 criteria, no more or no less because beggars can’t really be choosers. The criteria:

• Value for money 
• Taste and appeal 
• If it fill us up
• Chances of us having it again 

We saw you, we heard you, you needed this – we are here. Doesn’t that kind of make us your Gods?

You best be reading this every Thursday, this is not a threat.

By Maheli Sri Gintotage and Sakuni Wisanperuma

The post ACTUALLY broke by Maheli Sri Gintotage & Sakuni Wisanperuma appeared first on ChoKoLAAte Blog.