East meets West, the “Icebair” beach-side restaurant and the "Coffeetearia"

FIVE SORTS Ayurvedic herbal teas! Sri Lankan wines genuinely made from fruits! Marmalade from the Franciscan Sisters in Nuwara Eliya! Deutscher Filterkaffee! Italian Bialetti Espresso! Swiss Muesli with eatable Hibiscus flowers! Carrot soup with ginger! Swiss salad in a soup dish! Hand-carved chips! Old-Ceylon-Egg+Arrack-Punch! Indian Lassi! Daily new five-course dinner, now a cult! By pre-order from two persons up Negombo lobster, rice & curry, European sentimental meals. Shark, tuna and cuttle fish in any style. Beverages are served in freezed glasses and silver. 250 gram weighty French knife & fork set instead of tinplate are a pleasure for itself. For sinner’s we hold hand-rolled Sri Lankan cigars from a private humidor in stock, even rare Jaffna cigars! 

FREE AFTERNOON-TEA for room guests is served daily at the “Coffeetearia” garden, together with bird twitter, mood music. Wi-Fi and Newspapers are ready.

JUST NOW IN THE LEADING SUNDAY TIMES Adilah Ismail is recommending Head to Negombo for a gastronomic adventure:

The Icebair Restaurant is a part of the Icebear Beach Guesthouse and defies the formulaic layout of most Negombo restaurants... You’d be forgiven for missing it... but do wander in – The Icebear is a little haven tucked away in Lewis Place – the kind of secluded place you would go with a book to wilfully lose track of time.
There’s a sense of tamed wildness to the garden which is separated by an arched doorway that leads a path to the beach. Passion fruit creepers, coconut trees, cacti, bamboo, ferns compete for space with jungle flowers, hibiscus, banana trees, gotukola and a host of other foliage.
Thin strips of coloured ribbon are tied to the branches, fluttering madly when a breeze billows through the garden, and milk-white seashells are studded at the base of trees – I’m reminded of a book in the Anne of Green Gables series where seashells adorn Anne’s flower beds.
An old dog (Lisa) plods up slowly, greeting visitors with the gentlest of welcomes, while a hen (Laura the fourth, I’m told) disgruntledly scuttles into the verdant foliage.
The Icebear Guesthouse was initially built as a retirement home for the proprietor Gerd Haisch (“They call me Gerry. They baptised me with this name and I can’t wash it away”) who accidentally came to Sri Lanka and knew immediately this was where he’d like to spend his twilight years.
Gerry, who retired at the tender age of 53, realised two things during his early retirement. The first was that he was not wired for retirement and the second, the house was far too big to house one person.
And so, the Icebear Guesthouse came into being. Gerry explains that the privacy and seclusion his property affords is a big draw for its visitors.
At 7 p.m. every day at the Icebair Restaurant, a bell is rung seven times and music immediately fills the restaurant, setting the stage for dinner.
There’s a delightful disorder to the music – on some days it’s Jazz or Classical and on others, perhaps Elvis Presley or Rukmani Devi.
The five course ‘Captain’s dinner’ menu needs to be pre-ordered but you can also order a la carte... before the sun sets... the restaurant is charming... Rice and curry, assorted snacks, Roeschti and other Swiss fare, special breakfast muesli, seafood mains and an interesting beverage menu complete the café...

Email: icebearmanager@yahoo.com

Phone: +94 71 4237755, the Resident Manager