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From dinner parties at university in Edinburgh to one of Soho’s hottest restaurants, Dom Fernando and his culinary opus Paradise hold community and culture at the core of its cooking. Unveiling his exclusive ‘Taste of Paradise’ dining experience events in collaboration with cherished whisky brand Glenmorangie, the founder and creative director meets Wonderland’s Ben Tibbits to dissect an intangible connection between Sri Lanka and Scotland.
It’s a big day for Dom Fernando. We meet at a hotel a stone’s throw away from his central London Sri Lankan restaurant Paradise, which that evening will be hosting the first of five—shifted from three due to popular demand—dining events, with attendees sampling the establishment’s exclusive ‘Taste of Paradise’ six-course menu. The events—with the first taking place on 26th November and the following nights following on the 10th, 11th , 17th and 18th December respectively—marks a collaboration with revered drinks brand Glenmorangie Single Malt Scotch Whisky, celebrating their reimagined 12 Years Old and the classic Infinita 18 Years Old, and acts as an oscillation of two disparate culinary cultures, Sri Lankan and Scottish, both of which lay close to Fernando’s heart.
To mark the triad of experiences, the restaurant—which reopened in the summer following a refurbishment from Paradise “1.0” to “2.0”—has been given an extra glaze of Glenmorangie-tinged gloss. From a foliage display draped down from the ceiling to amber (the colour synonymous to the whisky brand) napkins and lighting in the cutlery draws, and shelves decorated by whisky books – ‘The Villa at Paradise’ sets the mood eruditely. “It’s amazing to see Paradise transformed like that,” the restaurant’s founder and creative director marvels as we settle in for an enlightening conversation about food, culture and creation. “It’s quite a pared back, minimalistic space normally, and the colour is brought by the food and the ambience. And so when we were looking at the build, it was about maintaining the residential theme but bringing something that is an immersive experience.”
The new and improved Paradise sets pace within the contemporary hospitality frontier, and the Glenmorangie partnership is a moment of crowning glory. The whisky brand—who have been refining their formula for 175-plus years—have gone through their own recent metamorphosis via their re-imagined Original 12 Years Old. The new release is Glenmorangie’s signature whisky aged for a further two years, designed to be even smoother than the Original 10 Years Old augmenting The Original’s much-loved notes of orange, honey, vanilla and peach to a new pinnacle of flavour. And with the brand’s own growth and its syncopation with what Paradise represents, the partnership felt effortless for Fernando. “I think hospitality has historically been rooted in tradition and not as much innovation,” he says. “And now, as an industry and as a business specifically, we’re always looking to do things differently and looking for new stories to tell. The Glenmorangie partnership was an opportunity to tell a story, and it’s an opportunity to put whisky back on the agenda in Sri Lanka. I’d never thought about using whisky in cooking before, but when we started to talk about the partnership, I got some whisky from the team and started experimenting with it and found it was really good.”
The six course tasting menu—an amalgamation of Scottish and Sri Lankan cuisines—showcases Fernando and his team’s culinary dexterity and towering vision, as well as the supple and saccharine sensations of Glenmorangie. Whisky in food can often be overpowering, or barely present, but Paradise perfected their formula with patience and care, and it pays dividends. The table d’hôte, which includes re-imaginations of dishes like Kiri-hodi and Mas Curry, is complemented by dazzling whisky cocktail pairings, such as the Whisky Highball and Chai Old Fashioned which feature Glenmorangie’s Original 12 Years Old. The 18 year old paragon, Infinita, is saved and savoured for a dessert pairing; a dram of effervescence to accompany a magnificent mouthful of Mihiri, a sweet finale of peppermint, cinnamon and clove tea cream, Halmilla arrack and blueberries. The multi-sensory array of forward-thinking flavour-led courses mirrors the tone and timbre of Paradise and its founder, whose key principles are innovation and maintaining relevance. “For us, Paradise is more than just a restaurant,” he defines. “It’s a brand that we’re trying to build. Be it food, design, art, drinks, culture, everything really. So for us it’s about an experience. When someone comes to eat with us, the mission is—when they leave, I want the emotion to be that they want to book a flight to Sri Lanka. I want them to feel like they’ve spent the last two hours in Sri Lanka sitting in a villa or under a terrace.”
The small details are crucial in Paradise remaining authentic to its mission statement. The restaurant, which nestles among the vitality of Rupert Street in Soho’s crux, has always implored to obtain a sui generis, and to find its own creative crevices. “I looked at who was doing Sri Lankan food in London,” Fernando recalls on Paradise’s genesis, five or so years prior. “In the suburbs—in Harrow, in Tooting, in Wembley, in East Ham—you get amazing traditional Sri Lankan food. But [when I was thinking about opening a Sri Lankan restaurant] Hoppers was the only restaurant that was doing commercially forward Sri Lanka food, but it was more South Indian than Sri Lankan. So I thought there was a real gap to do something unique, something ingredient-led that stays true to the Sri Lankan brand.”
Fernando, a London born-and-bred Sri Lankan who speaks with a charming certainty, has taken an idiosyncratic route to owning a restaurant, which was shaped by a four year spell in Edinburgh for university. “It’s such a beautiful place and I just fitted into Scotland and their way of living,” he happily remembers. “A Sri Lankan boy from London going up to Scotland was definitely a learning experience. It was an amazing four years, and I think if I hadn’t gone to uni, I think I’d have definitely done a stint there.” Although he “did what all good Asian sons do—what your dad told you to,” and studied Business & Accounting, cooking was synonymous with Fernando’s uni experience. “Before uni, it was my grandmother—who is an inspiration for Paradise—who taught me how to cook, followed by my mum and my mum’s sisters. So I took that with me and used to cook a lot up there. In my culture, cooking for a lot of people is a sign of love so I’d throw dinner parties in Edinburgh once a month. I would look at empty sites around the city thinking, ‘I wish I could open a restaurant’.” Following university, Fernando returned to London disguised as “an accountant who loved hospitality,” and worked in branding with intercontinental hotels. But the culinary itch was one he simply couldn’t scratch. With eight months of supper clubs at Brother Marcus in Balham providing a launchpad incentive for him to attempt to make his “dream” a tasteful reality, and with a credo cemented in his Sri Lankan heritage and a gap in the market waiting to be filled, Fernando took an entrepreneurial plunge. “I said to my mum—’Let’s go big or go home’. So I sold my flat.”
With a coterie of critical praise and high profile chefs’ approval, it’s fair to say that Paradise made a splash among London’s culinary bourgeoisie in its embryonic days. But the past five years have been far from plain sailing; the restaurant only opened, after all, three months before the COVID pandemic. “We went from having nobody there when we opened, to having three national reviews in a row and a hundred people queuing outside the door, to two months later I remember looking outside at Soho and no one was there at all, it was a ghost town.” But Fernando and his staff “soldiered through” with “a bit of Sri Lankan spirit,” surviving and then thriving with the introduction of home meal kits in the later lockdowns. In the ever-evolving restaurant business though, fresh challenges are never far from the surface. “Hospitality in general is a challenging place to be at the moment,” he says. “The external environment and economy has a big impact on the restaurant business—Brexit for example. And the lack of available talent in the industry, especially after the pandemic, is challenging. I’m lucky to be able to have such a fantastic team.”
Fernando feels that what customers want has changed. But rather than viewing the development as a problem to overcome, he sees it as a means to pioneer. “Guest experience has changed; when people go out now, they’re going to eat and drink for an occasion, which is different to pre-pandemic when people would come and eat for an hour and then be off somewhere else. So the way that we serve the guests has changed. It’s one of the reasons we’re repositioning Paradise to 2.0, to say: we don’t want to just give people rice and curry for an hour and a quarter—there’s lots of other great restaurants in London that can do that. We want to separate ourselves by trying to be unique and giving them an experience that they don’t get anywhere else. There’s challenges for everyone in the industry, but we’ve taken a step up; we’ve raised our game. It’s about still giving really good quality but cooking differently. How do we use waste more, for example, to really bring out flavours, or to use in drinks, in fermentation, in pickling. It’s made us more agile.”
We prepare to part ways, with Fernando set for a busy evening of careful curation and consistent charisma ahead. But first, some gazing forwards. He makes clear that this collaboration is just the start of his journey with Glenmorangie, with much more coming in 2025. He specifies on the newly launched inaugural foray into wine-making, named ‘Paradies’, and also speaks on plans to develop Paradise’s presence outside of the UK, hoping to lead the culinary scene in Sri Lanka with a soon-to-open chef’s table in Colombo. As a brand, Paradise continuously looks to break boundaries and push convention within the restaurant world, placing Sri Lankan heritage at its foundation. And with this new collaboration with Glenmorangie, Fernando and his team have gone one step further—they’ve bridged worlds, and unlocked the unexplored. “I want people to see that Sri Lanka and Scotland go really well together,” he smiles conclusively on the intentions of the three evenings, which you can book your table at here. “I really want people to see that everything we’ve done around Scottish food and Scottish produce works really well with Glenmorangie, and what we’re trying to do at Paradise. You see collaborations all the time, and we’ve done some before. But this one is the one I’m most proud of to date.”
Words by Ben Tibbits
Photography by Eleonora Boscarelli
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From dinner parties at university in Edinburgh to one of Soho’s hottest restaurants, Dom Fernando and his culinary opus Paradise hold community and culture at the core of its cooking. Unveiling his exclusive ‘Taste of Paradise’ dining experience events in collaboration with cherished whisky brand Glenmorangie, the founder and creative director meets Wonderland’s Ben Tibbits to dissect an intangible connection between Sri Lanka and Scotland.
It’s a big day for Dom Fernando. We meet at a hotel a stone’s throw away from his central London Sri Lankan restaurant Paradise, which that evening will be hosting the first of five—shifted from three due to popular demand—dining events, with attendees sampling the establishment’s exclusive ‘Taste of Paradise’ six-course menu. The events—with the first taking place on 26th November and the following nights following on the 10th, 11th , 17th and 18th December respectively—marks a collaboration with revered drinks brand Glenmorangie Single Malt Scotch Whisky, celebrating their reimagined 12 Years Old and the classic Infinita 18 Years Old, and acts as an oscillation of two disparate culinary cultures, Sri Lankan and Scottish, both of which lay close to Fernando’s heart.
To mark the triad of experiences, the restaurant—which reopened in the summer following a refurbishment from Paradise “1.0” to “2.0”—has been given an extra glaze of Glenmorangie-tinged gloss. From a foliage display draped down from the ceiling to amber (the colour synonymous to the whisky brand) napkins and lighting in the cutlery draws, and shelves decorated by whisky books – ‘The Villa at Paradise’ sets the mood eruditely. “It’s amazing to see Paradise transformed like that,” the restaurant’s founder and creative director marvels as we settle in for an enlightening conversation about food, culture and creation. “It’s quite a pared back, minimalistic space normally, and the colour is brought by the food and the ambience. And so when we were looking at the build, it was about maintaining the residential theme but bringing something that is an immersive experience.”
The new and improved Paradise sets pace within the contemporary hospitality frontier, and the Glenmorangie partnership is a moment of crowning glory. The whisky brand—who have been refining their formula for 175-plus years—have gone through their own recent metamorphosis via their re-imagined Original 12 Years Old. The new release is Glenmorangie’s signature whisky aged for a further two years, designed to be even smoother than the Original 10 Years Old augmenting The Original’s much-loved notes of orange, honey, vanilla and peach to a new pinnacle of flavour. And with the brand’s own growth and its syncopation with what Paradise represents, the partnership felt effortless for Fernando. “I think hospitality has historically been rooted in tradition and not as much innovation,” he says. “And now, as an industry and as a business specifically, we’re always looking to do things differently and looking for new stories to tell. The Glenmorangie partnership was an opportunity to tell a story, and it’s an opportunity to put whisky back on the agenda in Sri Lanka. I’d never thought about using whisky in cooking before, but when we started to talk about the partnership, I got some whisky from the team and started experimenting with it and found it was really good.”
The six course tasting menu—an amalgamation of Scottish and Sri Lankan cuisines—showcases Fernando and his team’s culinary dexterity and towering vision, as well as the supple and saccharine sensations of Glenmorangie. Whisky in food can often be overpowering, or barely present, but Paradise perfected their formula with patience and care, and it pays dividends. The table d’hôte, which includes re-imaginations of dishes like Kiri-hodi and Mas Curry, is complemented by dazzling whisky cocktail pairings, such as the Whisky Highball and Chai Old Fashioned which feature Glenmorangie’s Original 12 Years Old. The 18 year old paragon, Infinita, is saved and savoured for a dessert pairing; a dram of effervescence to accompany a magnificent mouthful of Mihiri, a sweet finale of peppermint, cinnamon and clove tea cream, Halmilla arrack and blueberries. The multi-sensory array of forward-thinking flavour-led courses mirrors the tone and timbre of Paradise and its founder, whose key principles are innovation and maintaining relevance. “For us, Paradise is more than just a restaurant,” he defines. “It’s a brand that we’re trying to build. Be it food, design, art, drinks, culture, everything really. So for us it’s about an experience. When someone comes to eat with us, the mission is—when they leave, I want the emotion to be that they want to book a flight to Sri Lanka. I want them to feel like they’ve spent the last two hours in Sri Lanka sitting in a villa or under a terrace.”
The small details are crucial in Paradise remaining authentic to its mission statement. The restaurant, which nestles among the vitality of Rupert Street in Soho’s crux, has always implored to obtain a sui generis, and to find its own creative crevices. “I looked at who was doing Sri Lankan food in London,” Fernando recalls on Paradise’s genesis, five or so years prior. “In the suburbs—in Harrow, in Tooting, in Wembley, in East Ham—you get amazing traditional Sri Lankan food. But [when I was thinking about opening a Sri Lankan restaurant] Hoppers was the only restaurant that was doing commercially forward Sri Lanka food, but it was more South Indian than Sri Lankan. So I thought there was a real gap to do something unique, something ingredient-led that stays true to the Sri Lankan brand.”
Fernando, a London born-and-bred Sri Lankan who speaks with a charming certainty, has taken an idiosyncratic route to owning a restaurant, which was shaped by a four year spell in Edinburgh for university. “It’s such a beautiful place and I just fitted into Scotland and their way of living,” he happily remembers. “A Sri Lankan boy from London going up to Scotland was definitely a learning experience. It was an amazing four years, and I think if I hadn’t gone to uni, I think I’d have definitely done a stint there.” Although he “did what all good Asian sons do—what your dad told you to,” and studied Business & Accounting, cooking was synonymous with Fernando’s uni experience. “Before uni, it was my grandmother—who is an inspiration for Paradise—who taught me how to cook, followed by my mum and my mum’s sisters. So I took that with me and used to cook a lot up there. In my culture, cooking for a lot of people is a sign of love so I’d throw dinner parties in Edinburgh once a month. I would look at empty sites around the city thinking, ‘I wish I could open a restaurant’.” Following university, Fernando returned to London disguised as “an accountant who loved hospitality,” and worked in branding with intercontinental hotels. But the culinary itch was one he simply couldn’t scratch. With eight months of supper clubs at Brother Marcus in Balham providing a launchpad incentive for him to attempt to make his “dream” a tasteful reality, and with a credo cemented in his Sri Lankan heritage and a gap in the market waiting to be filled, Fernando took an entrepreneurial plunge. “I said to my mum—’Let’s go big or go home’. So I sold my flat.”
With a coterie of critical praise and high profile chefs’ approval, it’s fair to say that Paradise made a splash among London’s culinary bourgeoisie in its embryonic days. But the past five years have been far from plain sailing; the restaurant only opened, after all, three months before the COVID pandemic. “We went from having nobody there when we opened, to having three national reviews in a row and a hundred people queuing outside the door, to two months later I remember looking outside at Soho and no one was there at all, it was a ghost town.” But Fernando and his staff “soldiered through” with “a bit of Sri Lankan spirit,” surviving and then thriving with the introduction of home meal kits in the later lockdowns. In the ever-evolving restaurant business though, fresh challenges are never far from the surface. “Hospitality in general is a challenging place to be at the moment,” he says. “The external environment and economy has a big impact on the restaurant business—Brexit for example. And the lack of available talent in the industry, especially after the pandemic, is challenging. I’m lucky to be able to have such a fantastic team.”
Fernando feels that what customers want has changed. But rather than viewing the development as a problem to overcome, he sees it as a means to pioneer. “Guest experience has changed; when people go out now, they’re going to eat and drink for an occasion, which is different to pre-pandemic when people would come and eat for an hour and then be off somewhere else. So the way that we serve the guests has changed. It’s one of the reasons we’re repositioning Paradise to 2.0, to say: we don’t want to just give people rice and curry for an hour and a quarter—there’s lots of other great restaurants in London that can do that. We want to separate ourselves by trying to be unique and giving them an experience that they don’t get anywhere else. There’s challenges for everyone in the industry, but we’ve taken a step up; we’ve raised our game. It’s about still giving really good quality but cooking differently. How do we use waste more, for example, to really bring out flavours, or to use in drinks, in fermentation, in pickling. It’s made us more agile.”
We prepare to part ways, with Fernando set for a busy evening of careful curation and consistent charisma ahead. But first, some gazing forwards. He makes clear that this collaboration is just the start of his journey with Glenmorangie, with much more coming in 2025. He specifies on the newly launched inaugural foray into wine-making, named ‘Paradies’, and also speaks on plans to develop Paradise’s presence outside of the UK, hoping to lead the culinary scene in Sri Lanka with a soon-to-open chef’s table in Colombo. As a brand, Paradise continuously looks to break boundaries and push convention within the restaurant world, placing Sri Lankan heritage at its foundation. And with this new collaboration with Glenmorangie, Fernando and his team have gone one step further—they’ve bridged worlds, and unlocked the unexplored. “I want people to see that Sri Lanka and Scotland go really well together,” he smiles conclusively on the intentions of the three evenings, which you can book your table at here. “I really want people to see that everything we’ve done around Scottish food and Scottish produce works really well with Glenmorangie, and what we’re trying to do at Paradise. You see collaborations all the time, and we’ve done some before. But this one is the one I’m most proud of to date.”
Words by Ben Tibbits
Photography by Eleonora Boscarelli
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