Najma's Kitchen — Restaurant in Colombo

Thank you for your response, but we need to clarify the facts, especially after being accused publicly of 'playing a game’, which is completely untrue and highly unprofessional. Let’s start with the first biryani: I returned half of it along with the chicken and egg after finding a hair at the bottom of the pot, an unacceptable hygiene issue. You replaced it, but the second portion was clearly leftover, a very small quantity with no chicken or egg. When we asked about it, we were given a dry piece of fried chicken and a fried egg (not how biryani is normally served). That immediately raised concerns. We became suspicious when the boiled egg was fried, which is unnecessary in a biryani, so we checked its smell. Both the egg white and yolk smelled rotten. Your waiter noticed this as we were checking, and we informed him right away. He went and told the older lady who had been seated from the time we arrived. She immediately began shouting at us, saying we were creating drama, telling us to pay and leave, and even calling us beggars and robbers, all in front of another customer. That kind of disrespect is unacceptable. Initially, my partner told me to just pay and leave a review, but when we were treated like this despite your mistakes, we simply couldn't accept it. After this scene, we randomly checked the expiry date on the EGB bottle, by that point, we had drunk more than half of it and saw it had expired in January 2025. When we raised it, your staff took the bottle away and never returned it. Then, that same lady told us she would call the police, and we agreed and waited there for her to do so. But instead, a young man came in much later, with no idea what had happened, and without listening to us, he began blaming us for not checking the expiry date on the soft drink. Not once did he acknowledge that you should not be storing or serving expired drinks in the first place. So, your logic is that it's okay to keep expired drinks and serve them to customers, and it becomes the customer's fault if they don’t check? You now claim the drink wasn’t expired. If that was true, you could have shown us proof then and there. Why wait until after we left and posted a review? And for someone who says they ‘don’t entertain games’, you had every opportunity to prove your point when we were in front of you. If you are so confident in your innocence, you could’ve called the police, as you threatened. You claim we ate most of the second biriyani, that’s not true. We returned half the first one and barely touched the second because it was inedible. And now, in a public reply, you're accusing us of playing games. If you truly believe that, why didn’t you do anything while we were there? You say you treated us well if that’s the case, then show the CCTV footage. It will clearly show who started shouting first and how we were spoken to. Whenever we see your restaurant, it’s almost always empty. Now we understand why. If you're serving spoiled food and expired drinks, naturally, people will stop coming. It’s not just about the food; it’s about how you treat your customers. If fewer customers are walking in, that doesn’t give you the right to offload old food on the few who do. And if you're still confident that we were in the wrong, I'm more than willing to come with you to the police anytime and clarify everything because we have nothing to hide. We may not have recorded the incident, but that doesn’t make it any less real. If anything, the only thing we regret is not calling the police ourselves. One final note: the food industry is sensitive. You're dealing with people’s health. If you can’t maintain basic standards or treat customers with respect, maybe it’s time to consider a different line of work. Instead of wasting your time blaming us, invest that time in fixing your service and improving...

If you want frozen chicken dum Biriyani which is frozen for ages and the heated and served for lunch then this is the place. Went there to take away some lunch cz this place is just a few steps away from where i work. Decided to go with the chicken dum biriyani and waited there for almost 25 minutes to get that. Anyhow I got a tiny parcel of what they call their dum Biriyani and it was all sticky and the chicken gave out a foul and funky flavor which undoubtedly from Chicken cooked days ago. Rice is all sticky and that is also I assume prepared the other night may be even before. Worst lunch ever and i wont be having biriyani from anywhere for a very long time. this haunts me. One star review is overly generous though. I dont know the dining experience or the food quality later in the day but if you go for lunch beware that they serve stale and frozen biriyani from few days ago and so. Disgusting to see they serve food like that to their customers.

PS: after looking at their reviews found out that they have a history of,

Serving stale/rotten food (take away/uber/pickme) Changing prices after taking orders Change the order as they wish and come up with whatever is available with them (take away/uber/pickme) Being rude and impolite when customers question or ask for something Being understaffed Taking ages to bring the food Unsanitary food handling and dirty cutlery Being ignorant and offensive towards negative comments and reviews Unprofessional customer service

Seriously places like these need to tun out of business. And also authorities should take action against serving stale food.

Update - 02/04/25

Their response to the above review is to bring the food parcel so they can check. Come on Najma's kitchen people got other work to do and how impractical it is to even reply asking to bring the food after days of the purchase. My lunch ruined that day and I got no time to bring you the opened parcel nor will do that ever. how shameful thing to say to a customer.

anyway just look at all the negative comments you have and its a fact that you give stale and rotten food to customers. try to fix that instead of asking people to bring the already opened food packages. if you need the date I came to your restaurant on 31st March 2025...

Went for the first time to checkout the place. At first it looked deserted but chalked it out to a weekday matter and sat down. Ordered a Buy 1 Get 1 offer for the biriyani and an EGB 500ml bottle - the portion was unusually small compared to any other place in Colombo that serves biriyani in a copper traditional pot. The second biriyani had a hair at exactly the bottom of the pot - when shown they gave a replacement after taking the pot and the plate with rice, chicken and egg - with just a bit of rice at the bottom of the pot. When we asked for chicken and rice they gave a dried piece of fried chicken and fried egg (as opposed to boiled egg that usually comes with a biriyani) - when we opened the egg the it definitely smelled bad - when it was returned the owner/ or someone in charge - an older lady started shouting at us and told us to pay and get out of the place or they will call the police. In the middle of this we randomly checked the expiry date on the bottle - and it was 12/14 of January 2025 marked as it's expiry. When confronted about it the server took the bottle to check and when we asked back for it suddenly it was missing - the entire damn cooler in that place was stacked with bottled of EGB - possibly expired - God only knows. The older lady even started shouting badly at us and told us we maybe mentally upset, and to go and beg on the road to eat. When we said to call the police - another younger guy came in an started telling us they gave us 3 biriyanis and when we asked about the expired EGB he promptly asked us why we didn't check the date before we drank it - I have been drinking carbonated soft drinks for more than 20 years unless the shop is a dingy place let alone in the heart of Colombo 03 - I have never checked the expiry date nor have I ever seen someone check the expiry date on a soft drink. He accused us of not checking the date. And when we told them to call the police if they want us to pay - they slyly relented and told us they will not charge us but they will also not call the police - I wonder why.

NEVER EVER GO TO THIS PLACE. DID NOT REALISE WHY THIS PLACE LOOKED DEAD AND DESERTED WHEN WE WALKED IN - BUT AFTER 45 MINUTES, A BAD EGG AND AN EXPIRED EGB later - I can see why this damn place...