Breakfast at Starlings Café

 29 June 2023                                                

 

STARLINGS CAFÉ 

94 Belvedere Road, Claremont, Cape Town

 

I went on a day trip to the Southern Suburbs and almost packed a picnic lunch until I recalled that I was to meet the younger goddaughter for breakfast and that two cheese sandwiches and a hard-boiled egg  would be redundant even on this long, perilous journey.

 

The Uber dropped me on the opposite side of the street to where Starlings is and for a moment I was deeply puzzled and felt lost in the rain in a strange land, as there was no overt sign that there was a restaurant in the immediate neighbourhood of low budgie looking businesses. The sole anomaly in the area was a building hidden behind a low face brick wall and a full head of greenery.

 

Aah, I thought, have I finally found a “hidden gem?”

 

I took my life into my hands crossing the busy, wet road and my luck held. It wasn’t quite the Good Hope diamond but it was Starlings.

 

At shortly before 10h00 the interior (it was far too unpleasant for anybody to be brave enough to sit outside) was a hive of breakfast activity and no individual tables were available.  We would have to squeeze in between laptop operators at one of the communal tables. Obviously, this level of patronage is good for business but it always irks me. My sense of entitlement demands that I must have a table as soon as I enter the establishment.

 

Fortunately, the goddaughter, who also found it a challenge to locate Starlings, was a few minutes behind me and by the time she arrived, we were asked to wait only five more minutes for a table.

 

Our small table nestled between a wall and communal table and yet it was cosy and private. It was fun to watch what the remote worker bees, with their backs to us, were engaged in on their laptops and/or MacBooks.

 

The interior of this repurposed old house is not exactly spacious with so many tables in there, but it adds to the feeling of warm comfort, especially on a cold, wet day and, perhaps because we were in a corner, there was no intrusive  patron-generated noise.

 

The breakfast menu is not adventurous, has the usual suspects, except for a fry up. The most daring dishes are the lentil dahl, the peri peri chicken livers and the curry mince on toast. 

 

Both of us ordered the eggs Benedict with bacon (R125). The price is the same whether you want salmon or Florentine as alternative to pork.

 

The eggs were poached to order, there is a good amount of Hollandaise sauce (though tang free), the bacon might’ve been crisp when plated but rather wilted under the sauce and the two slices of toasted sourdough bread, one under the eggs and one to the side with a cube of butter, were excellent.

 

The goddaughter drank a cappuccino and I had an espresso and cappuccino. The coffee was good but at R32 for the espresso it’s not much value for money compared to the cappuccino for R36,00.

 

The conversation was so engrossing I forgot to enquire about sweet options.

 

The bill came to R354,00 before tip.

 

I liked the atmosphere of Starlings, the Benedict was tasty, the service was efficient and the coffee was good. Given its obvious popularity, my recommendation isn’t going to boost business but it’s a decent coffee shop option for the denizens of the South, whether you like working at a communal table in a public space or are simply at leisure.  

 

The only niggle is that there’s no USP on the breakfast menu that will motivate me to return, especially now that I’ve ticked it off the list.