A while ago I attended the launch of Bistro Sixteen82 and was very impressed, you can read my thoughts here. There were some complaints in their first few weeks, but they seem to have their ducks in a row now as the feedback I hear now is mostly positive. I was quite pleased to be invited to try the breakfasts at the Bistro as they sounded spectacular, so I joined several other media people there for breakfast last week.

I’m not going to write too much about what an awesome venue it is. You can read my comments on that, as well as view pictures in my original post. Just to reiterate though, it is a thoroughly beautiful, peaceful setting. For me, this is half the value. The breakfasts are priced about the same as Miss K in Greenpoint, but there you just see the road and the traffic. You get car noise, car fumes and every second person that walks past asks you for money. If I’m going to spend that much on breakfast, I might as well make it a special occasion and drive to Steenberg. Otherwise, I can get an awesome breakfast, and some peace and quiet, for half the price at Cafe Max.

The breakfast menu consists of seven options. One is the healthy option of berries, almonds and yoghurt (R49), another is the only cooked option without egg and that is the selection of mushrooms with buttered spinach and salmariglio sauce (I also didn’t know what that was, Google tells me it’s olive oil, garlic, lemon and oregano – R50). I ordered the bacon and eggs with roasted vine tomatoes (R52) and because I love mushrooms (and because I had special media powers) I ordered a little side sample of the mushroom selection and they were awesome.

Most of the dishes come with scrambled eggs because that is their speciality (the chef was at Olympia Cafe so if you’ve had their scrambled eggs you’ll understand), but I opted for poached which were also good. Another unique feature of the breakfasts is the bacon which they make themselves. It’s not bacon as you know it (which is very unhealthy in case you didn’t know), it is actually a piece of pork belly which has spent some time in duck fat before being fried for your taste pleasure. It’s very rich, but so good! (You’ll see the bacon in the picture, don’t drool on your keyboard.)

Between us we tried all the dishes, Eggs Benedict (R55), Eggs Royale (with smoked salmon instead of bacon – R58), Scrambled Eggs & Salmon (R58) and the Chef’s Omlette with asparagus, basil and cherry tomatoes (R55). Everyone loved their food. Most of the breakfasts come with potato bread which is unusual but the bread tastes quite normal. What did cause greate excitement though, was the complementary honey brioche they brought us on arrival. It was delicious and went down a treat with the coffee (good coffee, by the way).

It was really a fabulous breakfast at a fabulous venue at a reasonable price. I recommend it wholeheartedly, but definitely book if you plan to go on a weekend.

Bistro Sixteen82
Steenberg Estate, Tokai
Tel: 021 713 2211
www.steenberg-vineyards.co.za

I recently reviewed Voila and Lazari on the Cape Quarter. These are pretty cool breakfast options if you’re happy to wait for a table and pay a fortune for your breakfast. Walking distance from the Cape Quarter (up the road and right along Waterkant street) is a little gem called Cafe Max, hidden on a quiet road you would not normally traverse.

Peaceful, no queue for tables, friendly and good value. This place really is a gem. I opted to sit in the al fresco area which is a similar size to inside (about 5 or 6 tables) and enjoyed the peaceful sound of the water fountain next to me. I ordered a glass of orange juice (R14) while I checked out the menu. There is the usual selection of breakfasts: Health (R35), eggs benedict (R42 with bacon, R50 with salmon), omlette (R49) and the option I went for, which was the sunshine breakfast (R29) which included coffee.

Now, let me tell you what’s in the sunshine breakfast: Two eggs, bacon, tomato, mushrooms, baked beans and toast. It was all a very generous portion and it was well prepared and served nice and hot. Let’s take a minute to compare value… Miss K down the road charges R50 for a similar breakfast plus another R19 or so for coffee, so R69 vs R29? Are you kidding? Even Cafe Sofia’s special for R25 including coffee is really half the offering of Cafe Max and about the same price.

Now here’s the kicker for those who are in the area in the morning during the week. The sunshine breakfast costs R20! It’s unbelievable value and the breakfast is actually so good and the place so nice I would eat there even if it was R50.

They are open for lunch too, with offerings such as salads, tartines and filled baguettes/croissants etc. All reasonably priced. They are only open for dinner on Thursday nights but they are available for functions. See their website for details on booking Cafe Max for functions.

The only negative I could think of was that there is no wifi, but apparently they are looking into providing that service.

Do I recommend you go to Cafe Max? No, definitely not, because if you go you’re going to find out what a little secret gem it is and you’re going to go back again and take friends and then they will go back again and take their friends and soon it will be so busy I will have to wait for a table. So I think you should stick to the Cape Quarter.

Cafe Max
Waterkant Street, Greenpoint
021 425 5102
www.cafemax.co.za

The Sidewalk Cafe has been around for quite some time. I can recall having drinks there a few times, many years ago in the days when I still drank Savanna. The place was relatively unexciting and it never changed in all the years it was there. There wasn’t really any good reason to go except maybe convenience if Carlyle’s down the road was full. So why is it full all the time now? I popped in for breakfast on Saturday and was lucky to get a table.

This is a question which I ask all the time. Why are some restaurants empty, and then when they are taken over by someone else they are full? People will tell me the difference between a successful restaurant and an unsuccessful one is location, but we are talking about the same venue. Think about Amigos at the top of Kloof Street (opposite Bacini’s). It was always empty and eventually closed and was replaced by a Moroccan restaurant called Fabulous. It was always empty  until being replaced by Bombay Bicycle Club which is full every night.

In this case, the common element is the Madame Zingara crowd. They started Bombay Bicycle Club and they also took over and revamped the sidewalk Cafe. How do they do it?

They have revamped the place, it looks a lot better with light colours and curtains draped here and there. It’s still small but there are about 10 or so tables inside and several more on the sidewalk. I went with the official Relax with Dax art consultant (we had just been to judge the entrants for the Old Mac Daddy trailers) and we chose to sit inside as it was a hot day. It was nice and cool inside with good air flow from the large windows which also provide lots of light.

There are about five breakfast options, and it didn’t take me long to select the breakfast stack (R45) which was poached eggs and bacon on toasted bread (I selected sourdough from the options) with fried tomato on the side. The art consulatant went for the potatoe rosti (R40) topped with scambled egg. I did notice that they offer a R20 breakfast during the week which will be a good option for the locals. As I mentioned at the start of the review, my poached eggs were excellent, possibly the best I’ve had apart from the Commodore. Both of our breakfasts were really good. The service was good and so was the coffee I ended with.

They are open for lunch and dinner as well, and reports have been good (read Rossouw’s review here). I would recommend it without reservation (that doesn’t mean you mustn’t reserve a table).

Sidewalk Cafe
33 Derry Road, Vredehoek
Tel: 021 461 2839

The food was of a very high standard, my bacon and scrambled eggs was excellent and everyone else in my party enjoyed their food too. The coffees were awesome too. I wouldn’t say that the food was far above what you would get at Miss K, but the big draw card is the venue. The setting is so beautiful, it would be worth having breakfast or lunch there even if the food was not great (but it is).

The outside area of the Roundhouse is called The Rumbullion, which is French for great food with a great view (just kidding, I don’t know what it means). The lunch menu features a long list of tapas like: olives (R35), olive tapenade (R45) which people were raving about, chicken liver pate (R45), basil pesto (R45) which I thought was amazing, pickled octopus (R45), and many more. They also offer charcuteri platters of various meats, prices range from R45 to R85 depending on the meat you select. There is a selection of salads, cheeses and breads. For those wanting something more substantial, there is a choice of hot dishes such as a cheese burger and chips (R85), fish and chips (R75) and roasted bone marrow with oxtail marmalade (R85).

We had a big group of about 24 people, and we went for simple picnic fare. We had the hummus, pesto and olive tapenade which were all great, some salad and some cheese, all enjoyed with fresh ciabatta bread. We rounded it off with a selection of the desserts, lemon meringue, chocolate mousse and yoghurt panacotta, all of which were so amazing people were fighting over them.

Another really aspect of the Rumbullion which warrants a mention is that it is kid friendly, the terraced lawns are great for kids to run around on, and the menu has some kid friendly options too. It can be tough to find really nice places that are kid friendly. If you’re looking for other options for kids, check out my post on the topic here.

While the service at The Roundhouse in the evening is very attentive and formal, the service at the Rumbullion is very casual. The idea is that you can relax and enjoy yourself without being disturbed. There is a flag on the table and if you wave it, someone will come and attend to you, otherwise the service mainly involves bringing you the things you selected on the tick box menu and then clearing up afterwards.

While they use the word ‘picnic’ to describe their al fresco offering, you don’t sit on the ground. There are tables and benches with huge umbrellas to shade you from the sun. If you want to bring a picnic blanket and relax on the grass, there is nothing stopping you (we did).

The Rumbullion at The Roundhouse is a great inner city escape. Protected from the wind and the traffic, with awesome views and lovely gardens it’s easy to forget that you are in the middle of the city. A very special treat indeed.

The Rumbullion at The Roundhouse
The Glen, Camps Bay
Tel: 021 438 4347
www.theroundhouserestaurant.com

We went to Lazari and waited, admittedly if we were a smaller group (we were 6) we would have been seated sooner. Also, because the weather wasn’t so great, there were no tables outside. The service was pretty good, and the coffees (R13 for a flat white) came fairly quickly which is important. The food also didn’t take as long as expected, low expectations meant that the half an hour passed quickly.

I quite like that they brought us a jug of tap water and six glasses as we sat down, something that was common when I was in Australia but rare here. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake as last weekend so I ordered the ‘Easy’ breakfast (R33), which is basically an English breakfast. I thought I would test them and asked for poached eggs. The waitress did not ask me how I preferred my eggs cooked and it seems the default is almost raw. If they were cooked a bit more they would have actually been quite good. The bacon was great, a generous portion cooked well. The tomato could have been cooked more and the ‘crostini’ could have been toasted more. Also the plate could have been heated, so my food stayed warm longer. This is a problem I had at the original Lazari. Strangely the plate to my right was so hot you couldn’t touch it.

The eggs benedict (R48) was apparently very good (it did look good). Whilst I always have food envy when I see plates of eggs benedict, I can’t actually eat it. It’s way too rich for me. I am also not a big fan of fish in the morning, so while I tasted the scrambled eggs from the scrambled eggs and salmon (R47) which were nice, I wouldn’t order it nor things like kippers. It was noted that the portion of salmon and eggs is a little small. In fact my friend complained and they brought him a some additional salmon and eggs which was very nice of them. Nobody had the omlette of the day (R45) which is their forté. But the Scrambled eggs and bacon croissant (R40) looked very good.

We didn’t have any major complaints and they did well considering how busy they were. I’d go back. You can read my review of lunch at Lazari here.

Lazari
Cape Quarter Extension, Greenpoint
Tel: 021 419 9555

I liked the look of Voila, so decided to breakfast there on Saturday morning. It’s a very cheerful spot, probably due to the main colours which are pink and lime green. It’s open and airy, so even if you’re not sitting outside in the courtyard, you feel like you could be. Voila is really popular for breakfast/brunch/lunch. There were only a few tables occupied when I arrived at about 9:30am, but when I left an hour later the place was basically full.

They have WiFi (click here for a list of restaurants which offer WiFi) so I was hoping to write this review while I was there but I couldn’t get the security key and was later informed that the WiFi was not functioning. Hopefully this will be sorted out soon. Anyway, the breakfast came within ten minutes so I wouldn’t have had much time to write. Apparently the speed of the service does slow down as the place gets busier. At peak times, your breakfast can take up to 45 minutes.

By the time I left, the service was already becoming disjointed. Luckily, the staff are not fixeted about only serving their own table so I was able to get what  I needed from someone who happened to walk past. As an aside, it really bugs me when you go to a restaurant and the waiters won’t even look at a table that’s not in their section.

The breakfast menu at Voila is quite extensive with many healthy options (which I ignored), the usual suspects as well as some more unusual options. I was going to go for the english breakfast (R49), but I was tempted by the Hot Spaniard (it just sounded good) breakfast (R45) and ordered that instead. That (as the Parlotones would say) was a giant mistake. The table next to me ordered Eggs Benedict and it looked amazing so I had high hopes, but my breakfast was gross. Scrambled eggs with chorizo and salsa sounded like it could be good, perhaps along the lines of huevos rancheros. The scrambled egg was fine, but the chorizo was more like polony, not the good quality Spanish chorizo I imagined. I didn’t enjoy it at all and was very envious of other people’s food (if you like the sound of scrambled eggs with chorizo, try the option at Cafe Beleza, it’s excellent). All the meals I saw did look really good, I just made a bad choice. I will definitely be back to try something else.

I had a flat white (R16) which was pretty good (Illy coffee), and while sipping that I checked out the rest of the menu. Lot’s of sandwiches and salads as well as some heavier options. It’s not very expensive, with lunch oriented mains ranging from R55 to R70 and dinner options around the R90 mark. It seems to be popular in the evenings, but the wine list is very short. A good option for a quick, casual dinner but if you want a good wine selection, maybe Cru Cafe next door would be a better option.

Voila!
Cape Quarter Extension, Greenpoint
Tel: 021 433 2377

Their breakfast menu is as unusual as their lunch/dinner menu. No bacon and eggs, just tostadas and pastries and one of the best coffees in Cape Town. I ordered my coffee (a wet meia de leite – R20) and thought I would try a tostada as I have had the pastries before and know they are amazing. I don’t know how they get them so light and fluffy. Basically the opposite of the heavy croissant I had from Liquorice & Lime the other day.

I must admit, the tostada did not blow me away. I had the Rabiola (R20), and it is basically some cheese on a toasted ciabatta. For some reason I expected melted cheese, but the cheese is obviously added after the bread has been toasted so the cheese is still cool. It was good quality cheese and a great fresh ciabatta but I just found the whole thing a bit boring.

&Union still offers free WiFi which is a big draw card (see my list of restaurants with WiFi here). The fantastic coffee is another draw card and the pastries are worth checking out too. So I’d suggest &Union as a breakfast/coffee option, but don’t think I’d recommend the tostadas.

& Union
110 Bree Street, Cape Town
021 422 2770

The place itself is quite cheerful. The decor is revolves around black and lime green in keeping with the name, which gives it a funky appearance. One can sit at low tables or bar height tables or even at the counter that runs next to the window (with a great view of the mountain). The place is very small, you could hail a waiter from the far corner without difficulty. This means the service can’t really ever be bad. The staff were friendly and assisted me well.

There is a small deli element to the place, the various walls support shelves filled with various items, savoury and sweet. There is also a selection of liquorice as you might expect.

There’s not too much else to say about the place. It’s been around for a while now so it must have a following. I know some of my friends frequent it (but don’t invite me). I would go again.

Liquorice & Lime
162 Kloof St, Gardens
Tel: 021 423 6921

My favourite market in Cape Town has always been the Neighbourgoods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill in Salt River. I’ve been to a couple of other markets and have always happily returned to the Neighbourgoods Market. But this last weekend I went to check out a new market in Tokai (not the Porters Market, which has been going for a while), in the Builder’s Warehouse centre. It’s called the Earth Fair Food Market.

When we arrived we did a quick walk around and I really liked the feel of the place. After the walk around we chatted with Jacqui Simpson who runs the market and I realised why I liked the market so much. Jacqui revealed that one of her strategies for the market is to allow only top quality stalls. I realised then that the quality of the stalls is a big factor. I prefer it when each stall has something to offer which is worthwhile, rather than having to skip every second stall completely because their wares are just plain weird.

The other strategy that Jacqui has applied is to focus the market more on buying things to take away than buying things to consume there. There are several stands selling food for immediate consumption, as well as a coffee stand and a bar, plus some tables and seating. But the majority of stands were offering foods and consumables for off site consumption. Having said that, there are also some activities for kids to enjoy while the parents grab a bite or relax for a bit.

As usually happens at markets, I couldn’t stop myself from buying things. I bought some cheese, some artisnal sausage and some fresh bread. I found the fresh seafood stall very appealing but knew I wouldn’t get a chance to cook the fish until next week. Other things on offer included: fresh pasta, vegetarian products (homemade patties etc), jams, olive oil, wine and much more.

We went at about 11:30am and the market was buzzing nicely but not too busy (a problem with Neighbourgoods Market). We enjoyed having some breakfast and browsing the stalls before moving on to our next appointment. I would recommend this market for a visit. They are open on Saturdays, but plan to open on Wednesdays from 2pm until 8pm which will be perfect for a mid week fridge top up.

Earth Fair Food Market
South Palms, 333 Main Road, Tokai
Tel: 021 788 2333
http://www.earthfairmarket.co.za/

My second encounter with Birds Cafe was recently. I was trying to find a suitable venue for a Just Add Heart event. The event was a presentation by Abalimi and Harvest of Hope, so I thought somewhere that was organic oriented would be nice. That was one thing I knew about Birds, the simple decor was an extension of their belief in keeping food simple and natural. I phoned them and spoke to Heike (the daughter in the mother-daughter owner team) who was very keen to host us, which was very kind of her as they normally close at 4pm and our presentation was set for 6:30pm.

At the JAH event I had some of their homely soup and bread which was fabulous and having spotted the breakfasts on my earlier reconnaissance mission, I knew I needed to have breakfast here pronto. So this last Saturday I popped in with a friend to have some breakfast. The decor has not changed much except for different cushions on the crate chairs and some light fittings. Birds is one of the few places that offer shared tables as the only option. They have about 6 tables that seat 8 and everyone just finds an open space and sits there. They also have a long dining room table which was being used for a baby shower that morning and it was wonderfully tablescaped. 

We found ourselves a table next to the window which also turned out to be next to the speaker. After wondering for a while where the birds were that we could hear, we realised the sounds were being played out of the speakers. We surveyed the menu stuck to the wall and I ended up going for the scrambled eggs with bacon, mushroom and tomato (R42.50) and my partner had the creamed eggs with mushroom and tomato (R25.50). Strangely they both came as omlettes. The menu did hint with comments like ‘Birds Style’ and ‘like an omlette’, so we weren’t completely surprised. They were both delicious and generous portions. Toast is extra though (R6), I believe their bread comes from Knead. I had a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice (R10) and a coffee (R12), my partner had a pot of tea (R20).

When we arrived at about 10am the place was quite empty, but it was full when we left, so it had a nice vibe. The service was a little slow, but I don’t think it’s the kind of place you should go in a hurry anyway. It’s a relaxing, homely, unpretentious place, which I recommend.

Birds Cafe
127 Bree Street, CBD
Tel: 426 2534