- A Sri Lankan take on Middle Eastern cuisine
Inspired by Turkish cuisine, a few immigrants from Berlin came up with the concept of Doner and Durum; now a restaurant specialising in Middle Eastern cuisine that has been around for quite a while.
The founders of D&D wanted some of the items, including their speciality – the Doner – to have a local twist to complement the Sri Lankan palate. Hence, the Doner went through a series of experimentation and taste testing before the launch of Doner and Durum. The restaurant is also very specific about providing healthier food for the customers, although they are a fast food restaurant inspired by Mediterranean street food.
We thought we’d pop over for lunch and try out some authentic Middle Eastern cuisine – some of which we’d never had before. The mains section of the menu features doners, durums, burgers, and rice options. While they began with three options for meat: chicken, lamb and beef, they’ve unfortunately had to take the latter two off their menu due to the recent shortages. Customers can also pick between five types of sauces: Classic, Mayo, OG Garlic, Spicy Lankan, and Thai.
We decided to try the Chicken Durum with the Spicy Lankan sauce, which is a Turkish wrap made in the sourdough style with a mix of Mediterranean herbs. The durum at D&D come with tomatoes, lettuce, Japanese cucumber, jalapeños, an onion-coriander mix, mushroom and potato mix, and marinated slices of chicken cooked in a vertical rotisserie. The marinated chicken is neatly stacked on to the rotisserie and left to slow cook for about four hours, after which meat is shaved off the chunk using a long knife once an order is placed and is then stuffed inside the doner with the veggies, and then served with a side of fries, along with mayonnaise and tomato ketchup. We really enjoyed the flavour that the sauce gave – we were told the spice comes from nai miris and it’s a fast moving item amongst foreigners. While even our Sri Lankan taste buds struggled a bit with the spice, we can see how it’s the best sauce in the house.
The burgers at D&D come with the typical lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and a patty. The highlight of it is the burger buns that are custom-baked and are soft. We tried the Chicken Burger with the OG Garlic sauce, because who doesn’t love garlic in their food. We had no complaints; the portion was big and the burger was a huge mess to eat – and isn’t that exactly what you want a big, juicy burger to be? The garlic sauce was also a great choice for this because of how well it complemented the patty and its rich flavours. At the price they had offered it, we felt it to be quite worth it.
Lastly, we had the Iskendar, which is a Turkish dish that consists of sliced doner kebab meat topped with hot tomato sauce over pieces of pita bread (sometimes croutons) and generously slathered with melted special sheep’s milk butter and yoghurt. We’d never tried this before so we had nothing to compare it to but just the description itself had our mouths watering. As promised, the chicken and croutons were doused in tomato sauce and were slathered generously with the sheep’s milk butter and yoghurt – so generously in fact, that we thought there was some kind of cheese in it. This was a delight on the taste buds and could be called somewhat of a deconstructed lasagna – it’s filling and will leave you completely satisfied. We highly recommend this dish – it was the star of the afternoon.
Doner and Durum is open from 12 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. from Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday, and 12 p.m. to 11.30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. You can find them in the heart of Thimbirigasyaya at No. 128, Ven. Muruththettuwe Ananda Himi Mawatha, Colombo 5.
Contact number: 077 997 7993
Instagram: @whatisdoner
