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Helga’s Folly: an opus of art, food, love & loss: Restaurant Review
Helga's Folly, 70 Rajapihilla Mawatha, Kandy, Sri Lanka. 2 starters, 2 main courses, 2 desserts, 2 bottles white wine: LKR18,868 (US$104, £78, EUR94).
The Highs
The Lows
The Highs
The Lows
Helga's Folly: The Origins
Helga’s Folly whimsically dances on the knife-edge of surreal and extraordinary. It’s is a grand opus composed by its namesake: Helga de Silva Blow Perera. A utilitarian space is decisively revamped room by room, and by hand. Her lifetime’s work to the world quietly resting in the jungle hills skirting Kandy. A lifetime’s work fueled by tragedy, loss and passion. If you have ever had your heartbroken, bring it here to Helga’s Folly where broken hearts appear on the walls for the world stand back, admire and bear witness.
The backstory here is important and well-covered. The daughter of a career diplomat as Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Paris. Helga’s mother, Esme de Silva, designed the hotel in the 1930s notwithstanding the fact her aunt was the architect Minette de Silva (rumoured to have been a lover of her mentor Le Corbusier). What you see today is the advice of her father after a divorce from her second husband following the suicide of her first husband. Her father told her to paint. And so she did; she painted and pressed every inch with paint and human emotion, brushstroke by brushstroke. I ask myself: why haven’t I heard of this place before? Why don’t more of us know of Helga’s Folly?
Helga's Folly: The Hotel
You can stay at Helga’s Folly. It boasts an impressive 40 bedrooms each individually painted, of course. A 10-minute, uphill tuk-tuk ride weaving into the dramatic, lush tropical Sri Lankan forest is exhilarating. The entrance is grand and swathed in a dusty rose with green vine highlights. Toby, the house cat, respectfully greets us upon entering Helga’s Folly foyer as if protocol. We are ushered to the main living room area moving passed a phalanx of family portraits and newspaper articles. You could walk passed this but you would miss photos of her recently deceased brother, Desmond da Silva QC. A notable and respected barrister who I knew by reputation but never met. Da Silva QC successfully prosecuted war crimes committed in Liberia and Sierra Leone in The Hague.
Helga’s Folly radiants with glowing candelabras crusted in greying candle wax. The candelabras add warmth and an air of melancholy adjacent to a gramophone aching out the warbled heartache of Edith Piaf’s Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien. We sip a shiveringly cold Sauvignon Blanc from vintage-style wine goblets slowly becoming intoxicated by our surroundings. I get up to meander the eccentric ground floor with a child-like wonder impressed and struck by the deeply personal disclosure laid on walls and in corners without abandon. The phrase “intimate setting” is liberally used for restaurants but it pales in comparison when sitting in Helga’s Folly and dissolves without a trace. The design and decor is soul-nourishing in a way that, politely, marginalises high-budget restaurants as vacuous and try-hard.
Hand-painted drawings of loved ones, couples, cats and frogs are playfully sketched everywhere. There is great temptation to draw comparisons to some early mood board for Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s romantic getaway bungalow. Yet these two wish they could be this unmistakably authentic as Helga’s Folly.
The drastic decor change is my nearest experience to the effects of ingesting class A hallucinogens
The Upstairs
We are invited upstairs where our dinner would be served to us shortly. The grand dark stairs start with a Cheshire Cat illustration and then stretch towards the second floor. A verdant lounge splinters into further handsome and lavishly decorated rooms. A nearby crimson dining room is gothic and bright: the blood-drenched walls pulsate with heartache, passion and irreverence towards convention. The long dining room tables are dressed with a phalanx of oversized wax-plastered candelabras. A mournful undertone is palpable despite the brave red walls that channel a scene and sentiment directly from Dickens’ Great Expectations — it is only missing a cobwebbed wedding cake. This would be an amazing dining room for a large group looking for somewhere richly atmospheric.
The design is soul nourishing in a way that (politely) marginalises high-budget restaurants as vacuous and try-hard.
Helga's Folly: The Logistics Of Getting Here
Booking and pre-ordering
Our email booking with the quick and polite Ms Dilu means we pre-select our dishes from daily options featured on their website. Ms Dilu also seeks to clarify whether we have any allergies or food sensitivities of which we have none. Our dinner constitutes an organised three courses. Years of small plates dining in the UAE and Europe leave the concept of a structured three courses with a sense of passing nostalgia. I could see a small plates concept working very well here and lends itself to the feeling of banquet dining. A grazing tour of Sri Lanka in the hills of Kandy at one of Asia’s most eclectic hotels and restaurants.
Helga’s Folly: The small matter of dinner
Helga’s Folly is an experience first and a meal second. The food is not forging any new paths in gastronomy. It would be wildly inappropriate for this intimate setting to be the platform for fine dining. Appropriately, Helga’s Folly resembles a home-style dinner comfort food. Ms Helga informs me (by email) and Mrs EatGoSee (over the phone) that the house chef is in residence for the last forty years. If only all organizations had this steadfast loyalty and tenure.
Starters
The menu is a glimmer into Sri Lankan food. The coconut soup starter is a mixed picture. The coconut soup is a ghostly pale colour and fresh like a coconut consommé, not cloy or sweet like coconut cream. Yet, an oil slick floats on the surface, coating the mouth and dulling the full impact. The bread is the best I enjoyed during a week around Sri Lanka.
Main courses
My chicken biryani arrives in a rustic glazed terracotta bowl with mango chutney and toasted croutons. These are novel additions in comparison to any biryani I ever enjoyed before. I am a convert: once you go toasted biryani croutons with mango chutney, you never go back. A discrete mug of cumin-packed, rich broth is a boldly spiced comfort drink demanding of a fire, tartan flannel and the kind of affectionate reassurance that only Toby the House Cat can provide. Sadly he was roaming the house doing the rounds at this time. I would like to think he was protecting us against the monkeys (an actual issue here).
Mrs EatGoSee (predictably) pre-ordered the Raj fish cake main course which is brimming with solid chunks of fish coated in a gratifying crunchy golden crust. The sharp lemony mayonnaise brings balance to the richness. It is the kind of damn good comfort food that Mrs EatGoSee adores. A fish cake is a deceptively difficult dish to get right. I have eaten more bad fish cakes than good ones (the perils of pub lunches). Mrs EatGoSee quietly munches her way through this monstrous fish cake so large it would have choked the original fish to death. It’s a portion easily sufficient for two hungry people to share. It would make an excellent lunch dish paired with white wine (or a rosé).
And then there was pudding
Lastly ‘pudding’ is presented humbly: a slice of pie with a scoop of ice cream like I am at my grandmother’s house.
After dinner drinks
We leave our periwinkle dining room and retire to the ground floor for (another) bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and a reminder of how beautiful and relevant Billie Holiday’s voice is to this today. When was the last time you listened to The Very Thought of You?
The focus on music here perhaps inspired The Stereophonics 2003 song “Madame Helga” – perhaps it was the owner herself. It could also be that the drastic decor change is my nearest experience to the effects of ingesting class A hallucinogens. Such things have long been sources of inspiration for musicians. One hour rolling through their guest booked armed with a clutch of crayons allowed us to create and leave our own indelible impression.
Would I come back to Helga’s Folly?
I look back on the closing of this decade with 2020 drawing ever closer into view. I do not know what the future holds and I will not pompously pitch ‘the future of food’ to you. Who knows, but I hope it does not include mermaid food (seriously, this is a thing, people?!).
Let’s Face The Music and Dance – Frank Sinatra
Nobody Like You – Aretha Franklin
La Vie En Rose – Edith Piaf
Happy Talk – Ella Fitzgerald
At Last – Etta James
Fever – Peggy Lee
How Long Has This Been Going On? – Ella Fitzgerald
How High The Moon – Charlie Parker
Too Young – Nat King Cole
Les Feuilles Mortes – Edith Piaf
Ol’ Man River – William Warfield
These last ten years saw opportunities to eat in truly exceptional restaurants. Moreover, I watched my grandparents serve me the last meals they would ever give me with a side order of life lessons before they slipped away from my embrace and rest peacefully, treasured, in my memories. I watched my dad sit in a restaurant after lung surgery holding my mother in one hand and a glass of Douro in the other. I sat with my sister in our local Italian restaurant while we lived together and she told me she might love the guy she’s now got kids with all these years later. I took then Miss EatGoSee to my favourite restaurant in London (RIP Tom Aikens of Elysian Street) on her birthday six weeks into ‘dating’ because I knew she was special but I did not know how special to me she would really become to be.
These were the best meals I would eat in this decade. So Helga’s Folly comes at a time of introspection and not just because it is the end of 2019.
Helga’s Folly represents one of the most unique restaurants I have ever experienced. It’s authentic and sincere forged in the fires of love and loss. And how do you measure a decade if not by these moments? Helga’s Folly grabs you by the heart, through your eyes to remind you that life and reality are sometimes dramatic, inexplicable and non-linear. If you are lucky, life is long but you may get a home-cooked meal and a story to tell for we are the ones left behind.
Some of you may want more information about the hotel. I cannot tell you anything about the hotel rooms but I know that I desperately want to come back and stay. The monkeys are so brazenly cavalier that they warrant a disclaimer in the bedrooms and an alien-like pixie sculpture that guards the pool. You’ll never get that at the Four Seasons. If you come to Kandy and you do not visit Helga’s Folly, did you really come to Kandy at all? Thank you, Helga.
Highlights from the Gramophone
They Can’t Take That Away From Me – Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
Let’s Face The Music and Dance – Frank Sinatra
Nobody Like You – Aretha Franklin
La Vie En Rose – Edith Piaf
Happy Talk – Ella Fitzgerald
At Last – Etta James
Fever – Peggy Lee
How Long Has This Been Going On? – Ella Fitzgerald
How High The Moon – Charlie Parker
Too Young – Nat King Cole
Les Feuilles Mortes – Edith Piaf
Ol’ Man River – William Warfield
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