The Strangers Club

18 October 2019

THE STRANGERS CLUB

Corner of Breamer and Wessels Streets, Green Point

It’s a conventional wisdom, if you eat a place with a view, don’t expect good food because you’re there for the setting and not for the quality of the eats. I had that experience at The Strangers Club, which, admittedly, doesn’t have much of a view, but is such a wonderful venue that one wants to linger. Regrettably, the breakfast options are severely limited and not necessarily the best.

The younger goddaughter found the place and recommended we go there today for the regular Friday morning breakfast thing, which I haven’t been able to do for a while.

The building, a venerable old mansion repurposed for the cool and hip, it seems, is on a corner, a block away from Main Road but still rather tucked away in an obscure corner of Green Point.  It’s not just a restaurant or coffee shop either, but houses a boutique selling exotic clothing and gifts, and also a furniture business offering a mix of what I think of as antique chic, and possibly more contemporary exotic styles. You can eat, have coffee, chill, work on your MacBook or browse – a kind of one stop adventure for the tourist. Hey, the younger goddaughter and I felt like tourists in our city for discovering and visiting a venue previously unknown to us.

We sat on what one would call the stoep, with three tables looking out on the parking lot below and street beyond, and two large, rustic, communal bench tables (where we sat), and the service counter. Behind that, under trees, is a large upholstered couch thing with low, small rectangular tables, obviously a lounging space, and to the side, under more trees, there are two more standard tables. 

From about 09h00 there was a steady stream of patrons, mostly, I would say, tourists and/or people who work wherever the free wi-fi is.

For a venue that’s so beautiful, glamorous and even funky, the breakfast menu is distressingly limited. Your options are: eggs Benedict, poached eggs mushroom and avocado, a smoothie bowl or a sandwich.  There’s not even a trendy, glam dish (other than perhaps the smoothie bowls) to pique the interest and that, at a prime venue like this, is a glaring lack.

The good coffee is nicely served in elegant white ceramic cups. The service was friendly and efficient.

The goddaughter chose the “nutty” smoothie bowl (R68) with banana, almond butter, cacao, almond milk and dates, and topped with strawberries, gluten free granola, chia seeds, coconut flakes and goji berries. If one discounts that it’s a very cold dish, it was lovely, not too sweet and it improved my health with just two taster spoonsful.

I went “eenie, meenie, miney, mo” and ordered the eggs Benedict on sourdough toast, with mushrooms (R72) instead of salmon trout (R89) and didn’t add avocado for an additional R17,

This was not an engaging dish. The eggs were poached just on the cusp of overcooked, with only a modicum of liquidity, and the Hollandaise sauce was, as I’ve come to expect by now, underwhelming with no lemon zing and a tad parsimonious. The mushrooms were tasty and the toast was good, but, then, one wouldn’t expect anybody to fudge up toast, now would you?  This Benedict was not a winner. I’d categorise it as “pedestrian” and advise the Benedict addict against ordering it.

I finished with a pain au chocolat, that was served room temperature and was therefore too doughy to be entirely enjoyable.

If you have a yen for hanging out in lovely surroundings sipping your coffee, chatting about Millennial concerns and trawling social media in public but are indifferent to food, this could be just the place for you.

To put it another way: this place is the epitome of style over substance, foodwise.