Where to Drink in Colombo: The City's Best Bars and Rooftops

Colombo's nightlife used to be concentrated in a handful of hotel bars that served the same drinks at the same prices to the same crowd every night. That has changed considerably. The last few years have seen a genuine bar culture emerge in the city, driven by a younger generation of Sri Lankan bartenders who have trained seriously and who are doing interesting things with arrack and tropical ingredients that the country has always had but never fully exploited.

Zaza Bar at the Galle Face Hotel is the classic sundowner location: a terrace directly on the Indian Ocean with the kind of view that makes the overpriced cocktails feel entirely reasonable. The Galle Face Hotel has been operating since 1864 and the veranda has been serving sunsets for about as long. Order an arrack sour, watch the sky change, and feel like you are exactly where you should be.

Smoke and Bitters on Flower Road is the cocktail bar that the city's serious drinkers have claimed as their own. The menu changes seasonally and uses Sri Lankan ingredients in ways that are genuinely creative without being gimmicky: wood apple, beli fruit, goraka, fresh ginger, pandan, and of course various expressions of arrack as the base spirit. The food is excellent. The music is right. Arrive after 8pm.

Colombo's rooftop bars multiply every year. The Sky Lounge at the Kingsbury and various roof spaces along Galle Road all catch the sea breeze in the evening and provide the kind of elevated view that makes the city look considerably more glamorous than it does at street level. On a clear night in Colombo, from a rooftop with a cold arrack and ginger beer in hand, the city spreads out to the horizon and the sea is a dark line beyond it. This is a fine place to be.