De Warenmarkt entices but does not deliver

 7 December 2023

 

DE WARENMARKT

Corner of Van Ryneveld and Plein Streets, Stellenbosch

 

The good news is that the Terbadore coffee is excellent and well0priced. The bad news is that the food isn’t at the same level of excellence.

 

It was a very hot day in Stellenbosch and after a perambulation of the CBD, looking for somewhere to ease my weary mind, I gazed on the cool, dark interior of De Warenmarkt and it called me. It was a Siren song.

 

I grew up in Stellenbosch but I’ve no recollection of what the building was used for back in the day, when it was a dusty, dull little studentville, but I’d guess it might have been some kind of warehouse.

 

It’s a large, open space with a high, wooden ceiling en those small, dark red tiles laid in a herringbone pattern that I associate with teh Cape Dutch past of the region.  One the Plein Street side of the building there is a space for wine tasting and a capacious oval bar and oyster and plonk pairing.

 

The seating is basically your pizza and beerhall vibe.  

 

The breakfast menu is simple and there’s nothing exotically exciting; just the common or garden standards. Weirdly, they offer a bacon butty on an English muffin.

 

My choice was the salmon trout eggs Benedict (R135.)

 

If I ate only with my eyes, I would’ve been well happy because the dish presented prettily but the eggs weren’t poached to order and there seemed to be no more than a teaspoonful of Hollandaise on each egg. It wasn’t excruciatingly bad, but just, in the wife’s celebrated critique, “decidedly average.”

 

The eggs Benedict at Cognito is a vastly superior dish.

 

For afters, I went for the cinnamon sugar pancake (“the classic’) (R40) and this was a real disappointment. The pancake had a worryingly dry yet rubbery texture as if it had been skulking in a heating drawer for days before being rescued.

 

I love a good pancake. There was no romance with this one.

 

 

The bill came to R233, including an espresso and a cappuccino, before tip.

 

The service was good and friendly and the cool interior of the joint was pleasant  and  people watching was off the charts, but  those were the only substantial positives.