not a Blonde joke

Blonde is the sister restaurant of Beluga and Sevruga-both have halfprice sushi on weekday evenings-and part of the Caviar family. Blonde is in a beautiful old house in lower gardens, and get this-until the end of august, EVERYTHING on the menu is halfprice! Tonight one hundred paid for bottled water, reserve bottle of white wine, amise bouche of pea soup, pate and bread platter, dukkah-infused duck main and an amazing pudding - including tip :) admittedly a lot of that was shared between seven girls but still left with a full belly and a happy heart.

"it's not a polaroid if it was photoshopped"

Definition of Hipster (as supplied by Raqel Cherry, studying music at Masters, Calif.; the quintessential but original hipster in denial):



"those people who are always at cool places before anyone else knows about them who carry polaroids and comb their hair back. They wear plaid shirts and skinnies with prescription nerd glasses."


The same genius minds that created the neighbourgoods market in Woodstock have fashioned a little hipster heaven in Woodstock. next door to the What if the World art gallery and just below gorgeous second hand store, Afraid of Mice; Superette is a glowing hideaway in manky, downtown Albert Road, that’s quickly developing a really cool nyork/Brooklyn feel.

Contempory furniture and a homely vibe, with a changing daily menu and oddly delicious cakes that will make you wish the menu didn’t change everyday. Possibly the best breakfast sarm in all of cape town and lunches assembled from fresh and local ingredients, monthly dinner club.

The blog here.

start my vogue collection

Sometimes you walk into a place and you feel like you’ve looped the space-time continuum and you’ve stumbled into your house, only in the future, and everything’s how you want it to be, complete collection of vogue magazines to boot.

Welcome to Starlings. Quirkily and thoughtfully decorated with a great menu and a patisserie table that’s fresh daily. Good selection of teas and coffees, it’s a perfect girls’ tea spot, especially in summer, as they have a lovely little garden out back.

Easy to miss, keep your eyes open for the candy-striped black blinds along Belvedere Road – it’s number 94.

Thanks to Annie P for her creative composition direction and mad photography skills. Thanks to Lil E for organising.

friends first

the commonground cafe has an awesome view, dee-licious breakfast, origin (read ‘greatest’) coffee and pretty shweet value for money. it’s right above rondebosch commons and looks onto to the splenderful mountain. take the morning off (or have your lectures cancelled) and catch up on some newsprint while the horrendous traffic outside ignores you. or meet up with friends and plan your 2011 living arrangements; not so much an actual house, but what you’ll put in that house and whether to have a herb and a veggie garden and how you’ll learn to cook epicure. sigh. blissful bowl of oats with mascarpone and berry coulis : fifteen. scrummy toast with scrambles and rosas : eighteen. granola with stewed fruit and yoghurt. twenty-five.

hurrah for the church with a cafe on top!

soul union

&Union
I'm not much of a beer taster myself, but from some more experienced mouths; the beers at &Union are different from each other (who knew?) and pretty damn good. For someone who doesn't like beer, they're also a little out of my budget - but there is a discount when you buy four beers at once. &Union's an in-town brewery in Bree street under the old slave theatre (now St Stephen's church or Commonground Innercity) and a lovely little spot for those people who are always at the popular places before they become popular and over-crowded. For non-beer drinkers they also serve wine by the glass or bottle and scrumptious coffee (try the 'pa special' ice coffee), or for the purer; warm milk with honey. I haven't tried the food, but the charcuterie meats and cheeses look and smell phenom. Last night, thanks to a last minute tip-off (thanks murray and twitter), I watched the gorgeous and talented Farryl Purkiss breaking hearts with a guitar and a looping machine. Some seriously amazing stuff, but I know if I owned a looping machine I'd spend all day playing with it and no time passing medicine. Alas, I find other ways to keep me from writing reports that are due soon because Farryl's also fun to edit on Picasa (free from Google).

See their blog.

the LW list

Everybody loves a long weekend. This last one was beautiful. In describing it I am proposing a list of things to do next long weekend (think there’s one in September). Be sure to mix in good friends and fresh weather.



1. Take a walk through Cecelia forest, in Constantia. Fresh and foresty, enough outdoors to get your heart pumping and remind you how well that respiratory apparatus works out of smog.


2. Buy an olive loaf, brie and the white rock with cranberries (ah-mazing), or other picnic-type deliciousness from woollies (in Constantia village, if you don’t feel it’s too far) and take it, with a picnic blanket to jammie stairs (at UCT) – watch the city sink into Friday evening.


3. Wine and Chuckles – anywhere you can think of, but best could be your lawn under the stars- plus no one has to drive home.


4. Shnuggle with a rented copy of 500 days of Summer and covet Zooey Deschanel’s bangs.


5. Hit an old coffee spot for nostalgia’s sake, and then an old nightclub – just for an hour, or if it livens up, a little longer.

6. Saturday morning only has one option really, the Neighbourgoods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock. Head there early for a chance at a table and fresh flowers and be sure not to eat beforehand. Open from 9am to 3pm. Alternatively, head out later and bask in sun with a bottle of red and a group of handsomely barefoot individuals.


7. Take a drive to Hout Bay via Camps. Be certain to stop somewhere arb and appreciate the sea from upside down on a rock- just to feel a little inadequate. Try Kimya Dawson’s song, 'I like Giants' on for size:

“When I go for a drive, I like to pull off to the side
Of the road and run and jump into the ocean in my clothes.
I’m smaller than a poppy seed inside a great big bowl
And the ocean is a giant that can swallow me whole
...
It’s only really scary ‘cause it makes me feel serene,
In a way I never thought I’d be because I’ve never been
So grounded and so humbled and so one with everything.”

8. Grab some famously battered hake at Fish on the Rocks, beyond Mariner’s Wharf in Hout Bay and slum it with the local fishermen and families. Worth the drive anyday.

9. Bake custard biscuits, choc chip cookies or jammie dodgers with happy-making girls. Double up the recipe and leave half raw - custard dough = beautiful. Buy some dough from PnP and plait into pretzels or loaves and eat fresh or wrap in a cloth for a picnic in a wigwam in the forest.

10. Buy rotis from Sunrise Chip ‘n Ranch (supposedly the biggest rotis in Afirca) and use as pizza bases. Invite people to bring their favourite toppings and cheese and have an indoor picnic with a tagteam in the kitchen, churning out fresh, hot pizzas.


For a delicious custard biscuit recipe, read this lovely little blog here, and follow the link.

the truth about truth

"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered, the point is to discover them." - Galileo Galilei

number 1 somerset road at the prestwhich memorial. tasting booth at the waterfront. district one museum. clean lines. minimalist decor.  easy vibe. simple style. warm, expert staff. delicious coffee. thick foam. no really, DELICIOUS coffee. fresh food. great little wraps for only fifteen rands. origin's biggest competitor.

and that's the straight-up truth. discover it.

ORIGIN-NIGIRO

Origin is one of those classic places in Cape Town, without which, this blog would be a joke. The home of Origin coffee and the people who are responsible for introducing this city to the ‘flat white’ is on Hudson street, near Cape Quarter. Downstairs is a masculine and warm area, perfect for a winter cup of coffee (or in summer, a coffee crush) and a catch up with a friend, while up the stairs and past the storage and barista-training areas, the space opens up to a peaceful garden of cacti, and some really weird sculptures. It’s upstairs that you’ll watch the local office workers almost queuing up for their daily fixes of the magic stuff.

Origin roasters are proud and passionate about their beans and are enthusiastic educators of anyone even slightly interested. Origin runs a barista course, which it also uses to create employment opportunities. Anywhere that Origin is sold (anywhere worth going); a home-trained barista must be employed, usually immigrants who were previously working min wage jobs.

Nigiro (origin spelt backwards) is a Japanese style teahouse stocking 140 different teas, also downstairs and completely protected from the rich coffee aroma by glass walls. Nigiro serves it’s teas in beautiful glass teapots and also runs a tea appreciation course, complete with thermometers and timers, an eye opener for presumed tea-lovers.

Origin also serves a range of bagels, croissants, etc. and delicious baked goodness. They have a daily menu and the food is scrum, but well-priced.

Like the Facebook group here.

Homely Goodness!

Hoorah the Kitchen! A lovely home-lunch, away from home, gobbled up while grazing elbows with friends and strangers alike. Delish and some really different salads at r40 for a really full plate, plus the menu changes daily. Try their famous love sarms, (even better than those at their biscuit mill stall), magical for brightening the worst of days. The Kitchen is making weekdays wonderful from Sir Lowry road, Woodstock with a warm vibe and beautifully friendly staff. They also caters for events and judging from the library of recipe books stuffed into the already attractively full Kitchen, these ladies can make most anything you’d imagine.

See the inspiring owner, Karen Dudley’s blog here.

kalk bay lazy day

Kalk Bay is just dandy. Spend a Sunday browsing over old antiques, looking through second hand clothes and just soaking some winter sun up along the harbour pier. Make sure you grab a croissant or a quiche and a loaf of bread to take home at the unpretentious Olympia café bakery, just around the corner from the original café (almost opposite Cape to Cuba, which is a whole other story).

The bakery is open early and you only need to walk through the red door and inhale in through your nose to know you’ll leave with something fresh, warm and delicious in your hand and later, in your belly. If you like vino, buy some wine pressed from the grapes grown in the tiny vineyard behind the bakery. Add this to a loaf of the best ciabatta in the peninsula and some brie from the mini-deli, hire one of the bakery’s bicycles, peddle through the salty air and just… breathe.

(the loaves literally sell like hotcakes, I could hardly photograph them without them moving off the shelves)

teacups hanging from the chandeliers

Canterbury street has one of Cape Town’s ultimate night scenes (Fez, Mercury, Fiction and the renowned Assembly), but who knew it could be so busy on a Saturday morning – after 9am?

During the day, lower Canterbury is swarming with shiny happy people, the littler ones with chocolate-smudged smiles, most of them carrying ridiculously pink-striped cake boxes. For the hour that I was at Charly’s Bakery, at least fifteen ‘mucking afazing’ made-to-order cakes were collected by people planning and pulling off twenty-firsts, weddings and any other celebrations justifying a cake, really. The bakery’s charming story is painted up onto the wall of the solemn old Jewish book store, now gorgeously bright and bizarre.

The best thing to have there? The choc fudge brownies are a popular choice but only or the brave, chocolate-aficionado or those sharing. Also delicious is the cheesecake and the friendly, pink-clad staff make a good cappuccino. Or try the lumo cupcakes that literally shou "eat me". You’ll want Charly at your next event or party, or use the bakery as an excuse to host one.

this photo's courtesy bronnie bosch (and yes, it is a cake)

Totally worth driving into town for :)

contact them at  http://www.charlysbakery.co.za