Kanéla Café, where reality trumps the website

 8 July 2022

 

Kanéla Café  

78 Regent Road, Sea Point, Cape Town

 

The younger goddaughter offered to take me to breakfast and, on her sister’s recommendation and because it had been on my list too, I suggested Kanéla Café. On reflection, I  regretted inviting the goddaughter. She deserves better.  It’s not that it was bad but it was meh to the max.

 

There’s a serious disconnect between the overexcited  mission statement on the website and the fact on the ground. You expect hidden gem but get covert cubic zirconium.

 

I know the lovely, elegant, olde worlde building well, from the halcyon days of the Europa restaurant and La Mouette. Today, Kanéla Café shares it with the Greek Fisherman. 

 

The café’s entrance is on Regent Road and the first room one enters has the service counter and perhaps one small table, with the main dining room beyond. My first impression of this mostly unadorned, square room with a fireplace, banquette seating and small tables against the rear wall and a group of small, free-standing tables, was of a very old-fashioned English tearoom, but not in a good way.  Quaint it ain’t.  

 

There are also tables on the stoep with a garden view, not much of an option on a cold morning,

 

By 10h00 the joint was full. Two people stretched past us to plug in their MacBooks because our corner table was next to the sole available wall plug, and another one jumped up to take our table when we left.  Loadshedding kicked in from 10h22, but was expected from 10h00  and we were warned to order our coffee before then, so I wondered how the MacBooks were powered?

 

The menu is extremely disappointing in that it offers nothing of special interest, to my mind a serious deficiency in trendy Sea Point, but if the place is as popular as it seems to be, this dearth of tempting food isn’t an obstacle.

 

If smoothie bowls count as breakfast, one has the option of four of them. Otherwise, you have a choice of avo toast, classic poached eggs on toast, vegan tofu scrambled, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, banana bread, chia cup, oats, croissant with jam and three types of toasted sandwich. You can, if you so wish, add elements to your basic dish, such as avocado, spinach, Haloumi cheese, or extra eggs.

 

The menu doesn’t offer any pork products.

 

It’s one of those situations where one looks for the least tedious dish. You aren’t distressed by a cornucopia of exciting options.

 

The younger goddaughter ordered a toasted cheese sandwich (R65) when she heard that the classic poached eggs on toast didn’t come with Hollandaise sauce but only with a balsamic reduction. How classic is that, then? It might as well have been fried eggs on toast.

 

She did enjoy the toastie.

 

My choice was the smoked trout, scrambled eggs,  roasted baby tomatoes and toast (R119). The dish looked and tasted as prosaic as the description. 

 

The highlight of the sojourn was a marvellous, yummy, moist slice of freshly baked carrot cake with a soft butter cream icing. (I can’t tell you what it cost, as the menu sets no price and I didn’t pay the bill.)

 

The goddaughter had the `Ferrero Rocher ball (R30), which was, to quote verbatim, “good but could’ve been better. Not very chocolaty and very date ball-like.”

 

We had time for a matcha latté, and an espresso and an Americano before the power went off.  The coffee was good.

 

The service was good, too.

 

The total bill, before tip, came to R334,00, which the goddaughter paid.

 

Going by the number of patrons, Kanéla Café is popular, and especially, it seems, with MacBook users, probably because they can use the establishment’s electricity, but I daresay no-one goes there for the food which is pedestrian at best, and I wouldn’t take a hot date for breakfast there.