Brunch at Coco Safar

 3 October 2021

 

COCO SAFAR

Artem Centre, 277 Main Road, Sea Point

 

One of the first scurrilous things I heard about native-born Capetonians when I moved to the big city 35 years ago, was that they enthusiastically embrace the concept of being fashionably late for social gatherings, dinner parties or restaurant bookings. It’s not really my way but today it worked out for the wife and me. We were due to meet the wife’s cousin and the cousin’s wife at Coco Safar, where one can’t book on a Sunday morning. (up to 14h00 anyway), for brunch around 11-ish. They, out-of-towners natch, were so timeous that they had to wait roughly 10 minutes for a table yet by the time we’d finished greeting them on arrival, a table was ready for us. It was a good table, too, with banquette seating on one side and chairs on the other, giving us great views of the quite splendid spot that is Coco Safar.

 

Suffice to say, the restaurant was busy when we arrived and the turnover was continuous.

 

One can order from the breakfast menu until 14h00 but can order from the lunch menu only from 12h00, a supremely odd differentiation that makes little sense to me. Fortunately, by the time it was our turn to order our food, having already waited a bit for two cappuccinos (R32 each), one rooibos tea (R35) and a mimosa (R65), it was 11h53 and the cousin’s wife could order a mushroom risotto with lamb bacon (R165)

whereas the other three of us were still in brunch mode. The cousin had eyes only for the crêpe newtella (R125)

, the wife craved the croissant Benedict (R129) , with lamb “bacon,” and my choice was the crêpe Caroline (R125.)

 

The wife wept quietly as se tucked into her fabulous eggs Benedict dish; she is prone to that kind of emotional reaction when she eats something truly delightful. The crêpe newtella was a gigantic buckwheat (from Brittany, no less) galette slathered in home-made hazelnut praline and folded over a small plantation’s worth of banana. The man had announced that he was hungry and intended having more food than just this crêpe, until he ate it and realised that he’d reached his limit of elegant sufficiency. The risotto was sumptuous, unctuous and delicious.

 

My plate-covering dish, also a buckwheat galette with soft fried egg, cheese, mushrooms and roasted baby tomato, was tasty and filling though I’d taken the precaution of ordering a speciality croissant with churros cream (R55)

to have with my second cappuccino and the lovely fresh croissant and lightly sweet, creamy filling took me back to Barcelona  where I’ve eaten the best proper churros I’ve ever had. À la recherche du temps perdu. Oh, wait a minute, Barcelona is in Spain. Oops! 

 

For afters, with more coffee, the wife and the cousin’s wife ordered pastries. The wife’s choice was the carrot cake (R125)

and the other party had the cocoa bean pastry (R125.)

The latter was rich and entertaining but the carrot cake, in a tempered chocolate tube tasted like spekulaas, and one had visions of a European Christmas on a slightly cold October afternoon in Cape Town, but with carrot cake and not mince pies. Not unpleasing but slightly off-kilter.

 

I just slung back a mimosa and watched the others relish their sweets.

 

The total bill, with tip came to R1400,00.

 

Coco Safar’s  contemporary take on  old fashioned elegance and the ambience of high-quality baked goods and coffee, makes for hugely satisfactory experience and we’ve been here a few times for the brunch, finding it superb each time. It’s not a restaurant for the budget conscious, though, and as much as we like the place, it’s not going to be a weekly visit but as an inner city outing for special occasions or special friends, it’s tops.