The Stack

28 December 2019

THE STACK

7 Weltevreden Street, Gardens, Cape Town

It wasn’t all bad, but it wasn’t all good either.

The wife and I arranged to meet friends who wanted only coffee while we wanted brunch. When I phoned, I was told breakfast would be served only between 10h00 and 11h30, which sounded odd but suited us perfectly.

It was a wonderful, hot summer’s morning so we found a lovely table in the shade of vine leaves on the patio to the side of the front stoep, with the elegant old building on our right and the trees of the garden mostly obscuring the block of flats across the street.  It was quiet, green and very pleasant indeed, a little oasis in the city centre.

The breakfast menu looks quite promising, with three health options, mushrooms, avocado or eggs on toast, a Stack stack, a Stack fry up, eggs Benedict, omelette and French toast. Good, honest breakfast fare with nothing as exotic as shakshuka, huevos rancheros or Turkish eggs.

The wife ordered the Stack stack of two poached eggs, streaky bacon, Emmenthaler cheese, pear and saffron chutney and spring onions on toast (R90.)

My choice, motivated by a need to de-escalate the excesses of the previous few days, was the smoothie bowl (R70.)

This is where matters became, if not utterly pear shaped, then at least wobbly on their foundations.

Firstly, the poached eggs were not, as requested, soft poached but overcooked. The wife brought this to the waiter’s attention and to the restaurant’s credit, the dish was replaced asap; the manager served the replacement and apologised. Unfortunately, the second batch of eggs were, at best, medium poached and still not what the wife had wanted. This was the point, though, where one eats what’s served because it’s at least a close facsimile of the desire, one is hungry and very reluctant to cause further delay.

She wasn’t blown away by her food and really didn’t care for the chutney and the excess of spring onion. The dish was, in her trademark description, decidedly average.

The truly puzzling turn of events was that I was not served the smoothie bowl I’d ordered. At first, I thought the chef had simply forgotten to put the ingredients through the blender but then the light bulb lit up and I realised I’d been given the Bircher oats (R45), with overnight soaked oats, grated apple and cinnamon, and berries.