San Francisco Frontiers - Sri Lanka's famed beach shack battles demolition

The simple Colombo beach restaurant has welcomed a string of celebrities,featured in Madhur Jaffrey's culinary travels and received rave reviews in international publications, including London's Financial Times.

"Beach Wadiya comes with a lot of history," said Suhara Chandrasekera, the founder's granddaughter, now a director of the restaurant.

But more than half a century after it opened, the glamour is giving way to grief at Wadiya -- which means "shack" in the island's Sinhala language.

The government's Coast Conservation and Coastal Resource Management Department gave Wadiya 10 days to pack up and leave -- or face demolition.

That deadline expired on September 10, but the restaurant is resisting the order to leave.

Seven other beach properties were given extensions of about four days to salvage furniture and fittings.

A few shops near Wadiya were demolished last month as part of a broader government plan to remove businesses within 10 metres (33 feet) of the shoreline.

"There shouldn't be any buildings within the 10-metre coastal reservation from the shoreline," Environment Minister Dammika Patabendi told AFP.

"We have identified 82 such premises and we are taking steps to remove them."

- 'Sea erosion' -

Beach Wadiya is the only establishment resisting the order and has taken the matter to court.

The family of its late founder, Olwyn Weerasekera, argues that the restaurant existed before the 1981 Coast Conservation Act being used to evict them.

"We built in 1974, which predates the law that they were talking about... We have permits dating all the way back to 1974," 26-year-old Chandrasekera said.

"In addition to the appeal to the Coast Conservation Department, we also took the decision to file a writ," she told AFP, referring to a case filed in the Court of Appeal.

The family has won a temporary reprieve, with the court ordering the department not to demolish the restaurant for two weeks pending a hearing.

When Wadiya was established, the beach was wider and cleaner, with rows of coconut trees, most of which have since been lost to sea erosion.

"Right now we have lost two of our huts... We've lost parts of our bathroom due to sea erosion," Chandrasekera said.

She said Wadiya was the only restaurant on the beach before Sri Lanka's tourism boom in the late 1970s.

Princess Anne had dinner at Wadiya in 1995. Nepali royals have also dined there.

British tycoon Richard Branson visited the restaurant during a family holiday in Sri Lanka in 1992, although the guestbook he signed was washed away in the December 2004 tsunami, according to the family.

Indian singing sensation Asha Bhosle, and cricket stars including India's Rahul Dravid and former Pakistan skipper Wasim Akram, have also dined there.

- Singing lobster -

One of the restaurant's walls has a reproduction of a Financial Times cartoon of a guitar-playing lobster that accompanied a March 1994 food review headlined: "Cook me tender."

The restaurant is best known for offering diners a platter of fresh seafood from which they can choose how it should be cooked.

There is no air conditioning and small tables are set up on the beach. An upper floor was added as the beachfront shrank over the years.

Experts blame worsening erosion on large-scale land reclamation farther north near Colombo port.

If the courts allow the restaurant to survive the government's coastal clean-up, Chandrasekera says Wadiya will return to its roots.

"The only restaurant on the strip," she said.

J.Peterson--SFF