Posted in Eats on 24. Apr, 2012
A short roundup of my favourite breakfasts in and near Cape Town. Because you should love breakfast. Because a good breakfast sets the tone for the day. Because it’s the only reason to get out of bed. Because it goes so well with coffee. Because if we weren’t meant to eat Eggs Benedict, why the hell would chickens lay eggs?
Business breakfast: Dear Me. Two page menu of breakfast options, so something for everyone in the meeting. They do a great eggs and soldiers.
Weekend lazy-brunch-with-bubbles: Bistro 1682. Ooh, try their Eggs Benedict with thick pork belly-style bacon.
OCEBD (Obsessive Compulsive Eggs Benedict Disorder) relief: Caffe Milano. Small but perfect Eggs Benedict (pictured).
Breakfast that turns into lunch: Cafe Paradiso on Kloof Street. Good food, beautiful garden setting.
Breakfast scene: Jason Bakery. Bacon croissant to go, or shakshuka (poached eggs in roasted tomato) to stay.
Breakfast on your own: The Power & The Glory. A stool at the window, watching the morning traffic go by, eating muesli with homemade yoghurt, or boiled eggs on rye. Poetic, really.
Hangover cure I: Superette. Try their poached eggs with home-cooked haricot vert beans in tomato. “Beans, beans, the magical fruit…”
Hangover cure II: Sidewalk Cafe. The Stack, with eggs, bacon, pork sausages, etc etc. Soaks up whatever’s left from the night before.
Coffee for breakfast: Deluxe on Church Street or Espressolab at the Old Biscuit Mill.
Market breakfast: Test Kitchen poached eggs on rösti with bacon, served at the Neighbourgoods Market (Biscuit Mill), still winning.
Quiet inner city breakfast sanctum I: Skinny Legs & All on Loop Street, part gourmet space, part gallery.
Quiet inner city breakfast sanctum II: Hemelhuijs, part restaurant, part design space.
Omelette: Olympia Cafe in Kalk Bay, light and fluffy like nowhere else.
Full breakfast buffet: Harvey’s at Winchester Mansions, the classic hotel breakfast with all the trimmings.
Breakfast with tourists: Sandbar / The Grand in Camps Bay.
Breakfast with the paper: Caveau. In the courtyard, with some Eggs Benedict served on a croissant with Black Forrest ham. Very civilized, old chap.
Salmon bagel: New York Bagels in Sea Point. For bagels and bagel-spotting.
Cupcake breakfast: Lazari in Gardens.
Mexican breakfast: Cosecha restaurant at Noble Hill. Another breakfast-becomes-lunch contender too.
Stellenbosch breakfast: De Oude Bank Bakkerij. In the centre of town, breakfast with fresh bakery bread goodness.
Stellenbosch breakfast II: Nook Eatery, whoops, had to get reminded about them (thanks, Miss Moss), it’s been way too long.
…
I concede, there are loads of other good breakfasts around (feel free to add in comments), but these are the ones that come to mind. Go forth and eat.
May the HP sauce be with you.
I get asked the ‘where to go for what’ question a helluva lot. Regular text messages like: “Restaurant recommendation please, bud. First date, somewhere cosy. Oh, drinks after? Thanks.” Phone calls where I end up discussing the merits of how important atmosphere is versus food. Emails from people saying they’re going to Paris and want to know where to eat. It’s cool to help out, and people generally seem happy with my suggestions.
Anyways, these days, you don’t need a black book, you just need a smartphone and The Google Machine. But I thought it’d be fun to throw down four or five spots I recommend a lot and for what. I ended up throwing down a few more. So here they are, 40 rather useful places to know about. Yes, there’s a lot that would overlap and plenty more to add, but this is just how I first thought of them…
- First morning coffee: Deluxe Coffeeworks
- Coffee & croissant: Jason (ex-Jardine Bakery)
- Hangover breakfast: Sidewalk Cafe
- Classy breakfast: Table Thirteen
- Brunch: Bistro 1682
- Saturday morning beer: Neighbourgoods Market
- Healthy lunch: Cookshop
- Lunch and the paper: Mozzarella Bar
- Quick sandwich: Jason (ex-Jardine Bakery)
- Unfussy lunch with a mate: Mano’s
- Classy lunch with a mate: Dear Me
- Power lunch: Caveau
- Long boozy lunch: The Foodbarn
- Very low-key lunch: Dias Tavern
- Hipster lunch: Superette*
- Sunday lunch: Woodlands Eatery
- Winelands lunch: Bar Bar Black Sheep
- Early afternoon espresso: The Power & The Glory
- Drinks by the pool: Sandy B’s
- Early afternoon beer: &UNION
- Vegetarian meal: Masala Dosa
- Second best vegetarian: Lola’s
- After work drinks: &UNION
- Martini’s: Planet Bar
- Rooftop bar: The Grand Daddy
- Dinner with a mate: Hudsons
- Dinner with the family: Massimo’s
- Dinner with a view: The Roundhouse
- Romantic dinner: Kitima
- Tapas dinner: La Boheme
- Business dinner: Bizerca
- Gourmet experience dinner: Test Kitchen
- Low-key dinner: Nonna Lina
- Zen dinner: Kyoto Garden Sushi
- Tequila-fueled dinner: El Burro
- Classy nightcap: Fatback Soul
- Messy nightcap: Black Ram
- 4am on brandy: The Shack
- 4am on cocktails: Julep
- 5am toasted chicken mayo: Restaurant L’Orange aka Engen
Feel free to add your own suggestions as comments…
* okay, so there’s more to the Superette crowd than hipsters
Last year the first We ♥ Real Beer Craft Beer festival at the Old Biscuit Mill was a huge success. The follow-up happens this Sunday. Yes, the Summer Craft Beer Festival. The 2nd Coming. The Best Sunday Ever. Whatever you want to call it, it’s going to be awesome.
The gist is simple: R30 gets you entry, your own We ♥ Real Beer pint glass, plenty of beer stands, food vendors and some kickass live music entertainment. Beers from &UNION, Jack Black Beer, Camelthorn, Darling Brew and more. And on the food side, I know Jason “Wheat-at-the-Knees” Lilly from Jardine Bakery is making porchetta (rolled whole pig slow-roasted over a fire), plus there’ll be lots more on offer.
What the Angela Lansbury could be better than that?
Well, this: buy ten pre-sale tickets and bonus, you get them for the price of 9. And buying pre-sale tickets means you skip the queue, which was nasty last time. Purchase tickets at &UNION, Superette or contact @weloverealbeer on Twitter or email shaunfrancbond@me.com.
Easy, yes. Great, yes. But, wait, I have something even better than that… (okay, this post sounds like a Verimark infomercial at this point)
Free tickets!! Yup, I have five tickets to give away for this Sunday’s event. How to get them? Simply post a tweet with both #RealBeer and @foodie_za in it before 5pm this Wednesay. Five most interesting/obscure/creative/whacky/funny tweets get a ticket. Done.
We ♥ Real Beer Summer Craft Beer Festival
Sunday, March 20. Old Biscuit Mill. Noon – late.
There it is. The reason you’ve been getting drinking fit since December (apart from that week of gym in January). The next We ♥ Real Beer craft beer fest is on a Sunday in March, from noon till late. As if the last one wasn’t fun enough (I think I called it “the greatest event I’ve ever been to!” at the time), this one promises more beers, more food and more music.
And with these beers, you won’t wake up the next day feeling like someone Chuck Norris’d you in the head. In fact, the hangover is rarely noticeable, so you should still be able to make productive use of that public holiday Monday.
Oh, and an early bird ticket deal: buy 10 tickets before the event and pay for 9. R30 per ticket. Available at &UNION, Superette or from @weloverealbeer.
Do it folks. Support the little guys. You know you want to…
Superette is very much part of the ‘cool Cape Town’ scene. It’s partly the crowd, a mix of bohemian and hipster folk not short on style or scared to create their own. Plenty of cardigans, beards, stripey tops and enough Wayfarers for a Ray Ban advert. Plenty of pretty girls too (even the chef is pretty here). If you’ve got a style blog, come here for inspiration. It’s also definitely the effortlessly cool design of the place, complete with mismatched tables, bench seating and neutral colour scheme punctuated with canary yellow. It’s also location, location, location, in this case smack in the middle of shabby chic Woodstock, aka creative central. And finally, it’s the knowledge that Superette is owned by Cameron Munro and Justin Rhodes, the talented duo behind the Neighbourgoods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill and the What If The World gallery. Yes, more ‘cool Cape Town’ you’d be hard-pressed to find.
During the day, bright sunlight streams in through large windows that look out onto busy Albert Road and its noisy taxis. A small kitchen pants to keep up with orders, working hard to get you your gourmet sandwich, salad or soup. The menu is very rustic country; things like the All Day Breakfast sandwich and the Pork Belly with Caramalised Onions & Apple are favourites, the latter being one of the best sandwiches I’ve had in Cape Town. In fact, it’s one of the best sandwiches I’ve had, ever. When you’re finished it you just want to go home and get into bed, because you know the day won’t get any better. A solid looking machine pumps out good coffee, roasted by Deluxe, another very ‘cool Cape Town’ spot, and you can also get refreshment via some Brewers & Union beers out the help-yourself retro fridge in the corner. I can think of far worse places to come for breakfast or lunch.
They also do a supper club, usually twice a month. This has run around various themes: I missed the Lagosta lobster one (upsetting!) but made it to the vegetarian one and subsequently a night of Spag Bol after a recent art opening (the What If The World Gallery is upstairs). The spaghetti bolognese was superb, but being a raging carnivore the vegetarian night was a challenge. I survived the quinoa unscathed with much help from red wine and a bottle of grappa. It was pure chance/luck/misfortune/evil that Cameron happened to have that grappa on hand that night and decided to leave it on our table. Big mistake. Half an hour later we’d polished off most of it and I have vague memories of announcing my meat devotion to anyone that would listen and chasing the chef down the side alley as she made a rapid getaway in her car. Eish. Either way, it was a really fun night and luckily they’ve allowed me to return since.
If you’re heading out to Woodstock (antique furniture, anyone?) or the suburbs (why would you?) then Superette makes a great stopoff point for coffee or a bite. There supper club is an awesome vibe too and well worth keeping tabs on to see what’s next. This is rather easy to do through their blog, which is very cool and well-written itself. And yes, Superette oozes cool, but that’s what you get when people head overseas, soak up the best bits of food and culture and bring them back here. You also get one of the best neighbourhood cafés in Cape Town.
www.superette.co.za
Who is the Foodie? It doesn’t really matter. Bacon is god. Wine cures anything. If you believe those two facts, then we’re going to get on fine. This means you have discovered the power of food to make life better. This knowledge is imperative to the art of living well.
