The Village Café

29 November 2019

THE VILLAGE CAFÉ

159 Waterkant Street, De Waterkant, Cape Town

There’s this sepia tinged, mythic nostalgia about home cooked food, where people (often in cooking shows on television) get all emotional about the food their mother or grandmother used to cook, and from whom they learnt all manner of fabulous recipes and ideas. My paternal grandmother died before I took note of what I ate and I never enjoyed my maternal grandmother’s cooking in any way at all, much less learnt anything from her. My mother cooked simple food well but, if she had any culinary creativity, was constrained by my late father’s “steak and egg on Thursdays” kind of hidebound mindset.

This leads me to the often heard exclamation, “I could do this at home and better.” For me, this lamentation resonates loudest regarding breakfast. Why on earth, for example, would you pay someone to serve you a bowl of muesli, fruit and yoghurt?

The Village Café represents a handy case study to illustrate that you probably could, and do, eat better at home.

This morning I trekked all the way to the upper reaches of De Waterkant, a neighbourhood that used to be a stomping ground in the middle years of the ‘90s, when this part of central Cape Town was almost a best kept secret, and way before the huge commercial developments of the 2 Cape Quarters complexes and the  surrounding area. What was once mostly a quiet residential neighbourhood has now also attracted many small shops and eateries and it's become a proper village with beautifully restored and painted Cape Dutch cottages in picturesque streets, some of them still cobbled.

The plan was to escape the Black Friday Frenzy elsewhere and to bask in the peace and quiet of the neighbourhood.

Apart from the opportunity of doing some writing, my visit to The Village Café was a disappointment.

The establishment is on a corner, with Napier Street,  and from the pavement tables there are views towards the mountain and downhill towards Somerset Road, and of the fabulous restored Cape Dutch cottages that have been desirable residences for as long as I’ve lived in Cape Town. They were reputed to be expensive 25 years ago; they must be exorbitantly priced now.

Somehow, because of the area, I expected the Village Café to be a trendy, upmarket joint but the reality is that it’s a sad café with limited breakfast options and not very good food, if my meal is anything to judge the rest by.

The only conceivable reason you'd want ot come here, Is to sit outside and enjoy the view.

The interior is cramped, with too many small tables in the space. Half of the room is taken up by the kitchen and service counter. One would sit inside only in truly bad weather. Even on a cold day I'd rather be outside

Most of the outside seating is on the Waterkant Street side, under an awning or the shade of trees. There are a couple of tables on the incline of the Napier Street side. The tables are small and square, the chairs are a mix of colonial woven rattan, and metal and wood garden chairs. The view is amazing, but the intersection is surprisingly busy, which means that there's little peace and quiet.

Your breakfast options are limited: three types of health option, filed croissants, omelettes, a fry up *with pork products), French toast, etc.  Two of the dishes have an alleged Cape Malay twist, in that the base protein is beef mince curry.

I considered trying either the mince curry with eggs and toast or an omelette with mince curry, for the sake of wandering off the beaten breakfast track, even If mince on toast I hardly exotic, but settled for an omelette with Haloumi cheese, olives and oregano, served with either white or brown toast (R85), butter and jam. I also had a rather excellent bran muffin with my latte R25.)

Now, here’s the home cooking connection. The omelette looked exactly like something I could cook at home, though I know mine would be far better. The texture was rubbery, obviously overcooked, and not fluffy as some of the best omelettes in this town can be. There was a small quantity of diced Haloumi and some halved olives.  There might have been oregano in there somewhere but the dish was flavourless, unless you count an eggy taste as flavour. It was not an inspiring dish.

The ciabatta toast was good. The fresh, warm muffin was the highlight of the meal. The latté wasn't great either. The coffee lacked body and flavour.

Before tip, the bill came to R150, including an espresso and the latté. This was by far not a value for money breakfast.

The joint seems popular, with tourists and locals, and it must be due to the location and perhaps the unpretentious nature of the operation. It looks quite nice and appealing from the outside but I'd say it‘s one of those places one could come to for coffee and a chat with a view, but I wouldn't recommend it for the breakfast.

Café Charles is a block away on Waterkant Street, also offers outside seating and, from my recollection, has excellent breakfast nosh.

Oh, and another peculiar thing: The Village Café doesn’t have a loo on the premises. One is sent, with remote control unit to access the entrance, up the Napier Street hill to a guest house where you have to walk in as if you belong there, and hit, git and split before too many questions are asked.