City Bowl Health Kitchen

23 January 2019

CITY BOWL HEALTH KITCHEN

9A Commercial Street, Cape Town

I often trawl through the internet listings of Cape Town breakfast spots and every now and then a new place pops up amidst the usual suspects. The City Bowl Health Kitchen was one of a few new mentions of a CBD establishment I'd seen in a while and the carefully angled photograph of the interior sold me on trying it out for size. Allegedly, a picture can’t lie and is worth a thousand words, but it can tell only half of the story. 

If you don't have expectations you won't be disappointed and I've learnt, in the context of Cape Town breakfast joints, not to travel in hope and to keep an open mind. Even so, this morning's breakfast kinda killed my vibe.

The City Bowl Health Kitchen (CBHK) hunkers down in the rear of a lovely old building at the corner of Commercial and Plain Streets. There is an entrance from Commercial Street but if you enter through the door on the corner and walk to the back, it's a more interesting journey past a cafeteria at the front and many rooms housing small businesses.

From this approach, the first part of CBHK you encounter is the smaller front section where the service counter and kitchen are. There are also some shelves selling deli products, such as free trade coffee from Latin America.

The dining area of CBHK is outside in a partly covered yard between two adjoining buildings, with the previously mentioned entrance from Commercial Street.

When you stand in the doorway looking Into the dining area, the first impression is of funky eclecticism derived from the (by now) retro, if not completely archaic, jumble of utterly mismatched furniture, with one side wall decorated with several artfully reconstructed pallets serving as shelves for crockery and greenery against a dark grey background, and the opposing other wall partially covered with greenery and partly with slogans and mirrors. There is a long wooden bench with cushions along one wall, a concrete seat along another, and a small counter at the window to Commercial Street.

The favourable first impression faded a little when I sat at my corner table and studied the interior and wondered why anyone would deliberately style an establishment in this faux “from poverty” bohemian fashion, which is obviously not anywhere near as artless or intriguing as the image and atmosphere it's supposed to invoke.  Frankly, it just looks low budgie and not in a good way.

The breakfast menu is extremely limited; the health option, omelettes and variations on the egg and bacon breakfast, with or without French toast. I think you can also build your own meal, but the menu was confusing, so I’m not sure about this. Some of the breakfast dishes have Spanish names for no apparent reason.

One orders at the counter.

I ordered the “el verdad,” without bread, which was one fried egg (for R10 I could have added another), two slices of bacon, two slices of fried tomato and a spoonful of mushrooms.  The elegant plate (my generous espresso was served in a an equally beautiful, small ceramic tumbler) was the best thing about the meal, which was supremely banal.  The Spanish name is just plain pretentious in the circumstances.

The coffee was okay.

Okay, so I paid only R82 for the food, a generous amount of espresso and a latté.  Thank heavens for minuscule mercies, eh?

CBHK is probably akin to the one-eyed jack in the kingdom of the optically challenged, with little competition in the immediate vicinity. It was quite busy between 08h00 and 09h00 (the close proximity to Parliament and 90 Plein Street must be a boon) but it's no hipsters' paradise and the (other) patrons were as lacking in chic as the décor.

By all means, pop into CBHK for a coffee if you’re in the area but, unless you eat only for fuel, I wouldn’t recommend anyone to make an effort to breakfast here. Despite the name, it doesn’t even seem to offer especially healthy food.