The Yorkies go to Brick Lane Eatery

  15 December 2023

 

BRICK LANE EATERY

The Quays, 142 Park Lane, Century City, Cape Town

 

This was one of the best days ever for Lucy and Prinses. They shared a bowlful of fresh chicken livers, which not only filled their bellies with a lovely treat but also eliminated the perennial need to scrounge for food from us or from neighbouring tables. This, and an outing to parts unknown, comprised Yorkie paradise or a close facsimile.

 

Over the past many weekends, the wife has searched out dog friendly markets because she prefers taking the Yorkies with, however annoying one in particular can be, to leaving them languishing at home.  Brick Lane Eatery isn’t a market but it came highly recommended and is very much  dog friendly.

 

We don’t venture much into the depths of Century City and this outing was a real adventure, an exploration of the concrete canyons, metaphorically speaking, of this vast development. There are so many apartment blocks I’m reminded of mass housing developments in the erstwhile Eastern Block albeit with a capitalist ethos.

Brick Lane Eatery is housed in a super modern building, amidst a conglomeration of offices and multi-storey  residential units, around a central, literally green eco lake  or perhaps a vast koi pond. The outside space of the restaurant, fully paved with bricks,  affords  one views over the water and the buildings around it.  The mitigating factor is that there’s plenty greenery to offset the otherwise visages of closely connected buildings.

 

Other than the large outside space, there are some tables in the downstairs interior, more tables upstairs and a sandpit for kids.

 

We had no booking but management accommodated us, in a busy restaurant quickly, efficiently and with no fuss by assigning us a table at the far side of the outside space, next to a water feature. Given the Yorkies’ predilection for either aggressively yapping at strangers or scrounging, this was a boon.

 

The menu is quite extensive, from breakfast (only until 12h00) to desserts, with your basic types of grill items, a comprehensive drinks list and a reduced price menu for seniors over 65 on selected days of the week.

 

One thing that’s sardonically amusing is that nowadays some restaurants elevate into “tapas” those mundane items that once were humble “starters”. Such are  the imperatives of  fashionability, eh?

 

I just wanted a light meal and thought the steak poké bowl (R130) would be it. The wife suggested that we share the ”nibble & sip” platter (R195), both of us thinking it would be like bar snacks.

 

The wife also noticed the doggy liver bites (R55) on the Doggie Menu and enquired about that. Our server informed us that the item listed on the menu was frozen but that for only R15,00 we could have hot, cooked chicken livers for the dogs. Say no more. As you will have guess from the intro, this was the best R15,00 we’d spent in a while, possibly ever.

 

I emphasised that I wanted the steak in my poké bowl to be as raw as humanly possible and to the kitchen’s eternal credit, that’s what I got, strips of steak so rare the wife called it carpaccio.

 

The two dishes were served at the same time and we registered severe shock off the Richter scale when we realised how much food we’d ordered.  The sumptuous poké bowl was vast and, frankly, I wouldn’t call it that at all; it’s closer to the harvest bowl served by the long defunct Harvest Café  in the Bo-Kaap. There are just a lot of very beautiful, very  fresh ingredients on top of cous cous.  It was also hugely delicious.

 

The “nibble & sip” platter is ridiculously misnamed; these aren’t nibbles and they are enough for four people. We had chicken popcorn, chicken spring rolls, crusted and deep fried mac ‘n cheese balls, cocktail grillers, sticky pork riblets, Buffalo chicken wings and beer battered onion rings, in almost ridiculous abundance.

 

I ate only some of the nibbles before deciding I’d better abandon that challenge and should concentrate on the bowl, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to finish my main meal.

 

Although most of the items on the platter were deep fried the batter was light and the items weren’t oily and were quite delicious. For the wife, the mac ‘n cheese balls were the highlight. They were lightly crisp and creamy inside but  were rather bland for my taste. Both of us thought the chicken spring rolls, with the lightest of batter and remorselessly stuffed with shredded chicken were very good, and when I had the riblets at home (seeing as how we took a significant portion of the nibbles home in a Styrofoam container), they were another highlight.

 

When we were halfway through our meal, the wife spotted an opulent plate of chicken nachos being served at a neighbouring table and was immediately envious, vowing to return to BLE soon for that very dish.

 

We shared the mixed berry waffle as dessert. This had a mixed reception. The waffle  was cut into pieces and stacked with the ice cream and berry compote, which meant that the waffle was soggier and softer than the crisp waffle the wife had anticipated. It might be an innovative way of presenting a waffle, but it’s not ideal though it still tasted good and there was still the merest inference of crisp waffle.

 

The bill, including one beer and three coffees, came to R535,00 before tip.

 

After lunch we were joined by friends who live nearby and had more drinks. The restaurant had been very busy when the wife and I arrived but by 16h00 it was much less crowded.

 

We had a very good time. The outside space is lovely, and well shaded if you just move your umbrella to follow the movement of the sun, the food is excellent, the service was friendly and efficient and the Yorkies, who were actually  quite well-behaved, approved.