Butter me up, buttercup

 13 January 2022

 

BUTTER

All day breakfast & bistro bar

70 Loop Street, Cape Town

 

My single New Year’s resolution for 2022 was to resume my regular weekly breakfasts, essentially suspended since the declaration of the National State of Disaster. Several new eateries have come on stream despite the inimical conditions of the lockdown.

 

Today, the younger goddaughter and I visited Butter, on the premises of the defunct Skinny Legs Luxury Café, which has an exalted mission statement, expounding the virtues of butter.  Reinventing the wheel, much? 

 

The stark white interior that characterised Skinny Legs seems to have been retained, and this means that the atmosphere hasn’t been improved, though it’s probably no issue when the joint is as crowded as it was this morning.

 

There are many tables along the one side wall, two more between the service counter and front door, and several metal garden tables outside on the pavement, where the goddaughter and I sat.  Not much social distancing inside.

 

It was nice enough to sit outside on a warm, wind free morning like today, but Loop Street is noisy. The narrow pavements of Cape Town’s CBD aren’t auspicious for outside seating if you want peace and quiet. It’s good only for people watching.

 

The breakfast menu is extensive, intriguing and with many dishes with “quirky,” ‘fun” monikers.  Lots of stuff in bowls, on buns, or wrapped up; basically, the usual suspects with funkier names.  Allegedly, butter is an integral element of most.

 

The goddaughter chose the “Butter Benedict” with bacon

(R110; R130 if you want smoked trout) and drank an orange juice (R41), which unfortunately took an age to be served, but was good. My drinks were an espresso (R25) and a cappuccino (R27) (excellent coffee) and I ate “Pedro’s Choice” (R98).

 

The generous zingy Benedict comprises of two poached eggs on a homemade English muffin with bacon, and a brown butter Hollandaise sauce.  The goddaughter was well happy.

 

 

My tortilla was filled with chipotle spiced pulled pork, a fried egg, coriander, pickled onion and a bourbon BBQ sauce. As is usually the case, the wrap was served cut in half on an unadorned plate. There was perhaps a tad too much tortilla for the filling but the pork was perfectly cooked and yummy.

 

The bill, including drinks, came to R301,00 without tip, which the goddaughter generously paid. 

 

All but three of the breakfast dishes cost less than R100,00 and everything seems to be fair value for money and, going on what we ate this morning, tasty.  The interior isn’t cosy enough for me, when empty, yet if it’s crowded it’s going to be noisy and uncomfortable, so I can’t see myself returning here again and again but that’s my bias. I can recommend Butter for the food;  others might like the spartan atmosphere, or the crowd, if it’s always like that.