A sad day at the V & A Waterfront

 14 January 2022

 

GINJA 

WIMPY

V & A Waterfront, Cape Town

 

Go to Tasha’s for breakfast, the wife said, you haven’t been there since 2019.

 

The food at Tasha’s has always been good, the wife said, and it’s a lovely place for breakfast.

 

This was her guidance to me when I said, when planning to run some errands in the Waterfront, that I was leaning towards eating breakfast at the Spur.  I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a Spur breakfast and if I have, it must’ve been in the previous century.

 

You can afford to eat at Tasha’s, the wife said, why go to the Spur where the food won’t be anywhere near as good?

 

With the unparalleled clarity of vision 20/20 hindsight gives, I should’ve gone to Tasha’s but because I wanted to go somewhere I hadn’t been to yet, I compromised by skipping the Spur and going off to  Ginja in the mall at the  Victoria & Alfred Hotel.  

 

The restaurant space is a long, covered stoep with wooden tables and rattan chairs, and views over the water. One can also sit outside on the quayside under umbrellas.

 

There are two types of prix fixe breakfast: the hot breakfast for R120,00 and a cold, continental style breakfast for R195,00.  The menu was taken away so quickly that I don’t recall what the continental offering comprises, but there are three choices of hot meals: Turkish, eggs, eggs Benedict, and something else I also don’t recall. The memory ain’t what it used to be.

 

I chose the Turkish eggs.  How foolish of me.

 

Now, the way I see Turkish eggs (çilbir) is that it’s two poached eggs on a bed of yoghurt, seasoned and enhanced with salt, grated raw garlic (which I avoid if I can) and perhaps sumac, cumin or paprika, plus a chilli butter sauce. One should also have some good bread. It’s a very simple breakfast but quite delicious. 

 

What Ginja gave me was overcooked scrambled egg, despite my request for soft poached egg, with perhaps a tablespoonful of yoghurt on a bland piece of  flatbread, with sharp chilli, leaves and halved baby tomatoes. The chef heeded my request to leave off the garlic.

 

Look, I don’t give myself out to be an expert on Turkish cuisine but this thing on my plate wasn’t çilbir and it wasn’t particularly enjoyable. I don’t often send food back, as I will eat anything that’s not inedible even if it’s not 100% according to the brief, so I cleared my plate and the worst one can say about this dish is that it was no better than pedestrian, not çilbir and overpriced. 

 

The generous espresso (R25) was the highlight of the breakfast. 

 

I pondered whether I should have, if available, a sweet pastry with my customary après breakfast cappuccino but my bitterness at being cheated out of the expected çilbir got the better of me. I paid the R145 before tip bill (passive aggressively) and went to the Wimpy in the main shopping centre to soothe my shattered nerves with a waffle and a coffee.

 

The wife and I love Wimpy as an occasional destination, especially on road trips upcountry, because you generally get what you expect. Once, too, standard Wimpy coffee was my yardstick for excellence before the current gourmet coffee zeitgeist. Unfortunately, we’ve discovered that not all Wimpys are created equal.

 

I love a good Wimpy waffle, usually lightly crisp on the outside with soft, smooth interior, which one can have with syrup or ice cream or both. My preference is for just the ice cream.

 

Sadly, what I got today (R44,90) was a soft, doughy waffle with no colour, obviously not freshly made. I’d bet a packaged, frozen waffle was just flung into a microwave oven. It was served with two humongous and excessive scoops of good ice cream. The Wimpy could save plenty money by serving just one scoop, which is more than enough even for someone with a full set of sweet dentures. I ate the waffle but chowing through the anaemic, pliable crumb was mostly a grim slog. The  Antarctic continent worth of ice cream gave me brain freeze.

 

My disappointment was compounded by a poor, weak cup of coffee (R27.90), admittedly just shy of 500ml, that made me wonder whether they gave me Ricoffy instead of filter coffee. Once again, this is not what I’m used to, as most everywhere else the basic Wimpy coffee is good and well worth the visit.

 

Okay, so next time I’m in the Waterfront, I’ll go to Tasha’s.  Life lesson 101: heed the wife’s advice.