Ciao, çılbır, ciao at Deer Park Café

 23 February 2024

 

DEER PARK CAFÉ

2 Deer Park Drive, Highlands Estate, Cape Town

 

The wife and I have eaten brunch and lunch at Deer Park Café but I’ve never been for a Friday breakfast and when I saw “Turkish free range eggs” on the breakfast menu on the website, and fondly recalled those other meals, my mind was made up. 

 

It was a lovely warm morning, all the doors of the restaurant were open and all of the shady tables outside were taken by the time I arrived, so I sat inside where it was also quite pleasant. Deer Park Café is dog friendly and the park next door caters to both kids and canines; there were a few of both species today but unobtrusive. It seemed to me that the patrons were a mix of locals and tourists.

 

The menu has a bit of everything, with the Turkish eggs and akoori scrambled eggs being the most exotic, there’s a fry up, the usual health options, French toast and even beans on toast, an item one hardly sees anywhere else.

 

I’ve eaten a few breakfasts in recent times at restaurants that offer Turkish eggs (çilbir), which seems to be the exotic dish du jour, with huevos rancheros having been seen off and shakshuka a distant second.

 

I think my first experience of the dish, when I was ignorant of what it was supposed to be, was at Vixi Social House in Bree Street, where it was served with roasted tomatoes and spinach or kale, to bulk up an otherwise simple, sparse dish and perhaps to make it more palatable for the non-Turkish palate.  There’s also another place that served an enhanced version of the dish, though its identity escapes me now.

 

Since then, I’ve done the research, watched Nigella Lawson flirtatiously cook Turkish eggs, returned to Türkiye to sample the dish in its natural habitat and began cooking it for my breakfast on Tuesdays, so I reckon I can confidently position myself as a pseudo-expert on çilbir.  

 

Insofar as çilbir is constituted of poached eggs on yoghurt (normally with grated garlic, which I avoid), sometimes enhanced with sumac or perhaps cumin and a chilli butter sauce, served with bread, Deer Park Café’s dish doesn’t quite violate the Trade Descriptions Act but it is a knock off version.

 

Visually, it’s meh and the immediate impression is, where’s the rest of it? 

The eggs were overcooked, it seemed that the chef had scraped the bottom of the yoghurt container to remove the last two dessert spoonsful and I couldn’t see the butter sauce, though the requisite hit of chilli was present. The toast was thick and crusty but a good flat bread would have been preferable.

 

It's not a terrible dish but my feeling is, if you want to present this kind of dish, do it proper or leave it off the menu.  

 

I don’t think any of the Turkish restaurants in Cape Town do breakfast, so it’s kinda peculiar that other types of eateries offer Turkish eggs. The best I’ve had in Cape Town were at Against the Grain, Mulberry & Prince and Florentin, with the last two neck-a-neck. If you’re interested in çilbir, go there. Order something else at Deer Park Café.

 

I finished with my second cortado of the morning and a slice of very good, warm apple crumble (R58) which saved the day. 

 

The bill, inclusive of two cortados, came to R216,00 before tip.

 

Service is friendly and efficient, the coffee good and the ambience  pleasant and relaxed, especially if you can find an empty table outside for the park view but the interiors seating is fine too.