The Cosmo Guy

With boundless energy, Rahaal Balasuriya, the co-founder of recent hotspot, Bowl’d, is all set to take on his next restaurant project. Here, he dishes on how his restaurant even came about, his ultimate date night (he’s not single, sorry, ladies!) and his plans for the future.

- Shihaam Hassanali

Q/ HOW DID THE IDEA FOR BOWL’D COME ABOUT?

A/ When I returned to Sri Lanka after my masters, I worked as a management trainee to gain some experience while I figured out what I wanted to do. After a year, I started working for my family’s business, but I didn’t find it challenging enough. One day, Anithra, my friend of over 10 years, and I were just driving somewhere and talking when the idea came about. She really wanted to start a restaurant with Poké Bowls as the highlight, and I was totally on board. I also love Japanese food with a passion!

But, it was just a conversation; it’s like how people say, ‘Yeah let’s do something’ and nothing really happens afterwards (I’m guilty of doing this too!). But, we kept talking. I travelled to Japan for a couple of weeks, and we talked some more about the idea. I even bought some knives and bowls we could maybe use someday in the restaurant, but we hadn’t even locked down where we were going to have it! When I returned, we started getting down to working on it. Neither of us had any experience at all with how to set up and run a restaurant, and we started speaking to kitchen equipment companies, even before we knew where we were going to start the business.