Rustic never sleeps at the Picnic Café at Montebello Design Centre

 26 May 2024

 

PICNIC CAFÉ at Montebello Design Centre

Newlands Avenue, Newlands, Cape Town

 

The Picnic Café is the rustic, radically informal second cousin to the Gardener’s Cottage elsewhere on the Montebello grounds with a severely simplistic menu to match but the setting, with heavy wooden furniture underneath the proverbial umbrella of trees, is as picturesque as you can get.

 

It was Yorkie Outing Day again and they had a ball, especially after lunch when they slowly ambled around the area, sniffing all the dog news fit to read.  The café was busy and many people brought their pooches, most of them larger than ours and very calm and collected. It was only when some kids were running around that our Prinses showed any signs of agitation.

 

As usual, Lucy concentrated on the dog treats and morsels of food and shut her yap unless she lost patience with the (to her, defective) speed of service from her two butlers (the wife and moi).

 

You get a large, laminated menu heavy on toasted sandwiches and there were a couple of other items, e.g. a burger, on a blackboard outside the deli where you order your food and drink.  The deli also offers croissants, cakes and pastries.

 

Your order is delivered to the table in a large basket.

 

The wife went inside to order the chicken mayo tramezzini with wasabi with extra mushrooms for her and the breakfast tramezzini with fried egg, bacon, cheese and tomato for me. We drank flat whites, served in takeaway containers with lids. The food comes on plastic-y paper plates.

 

When our sandwiches arrived at the table, the wife immediately noticed that her’s wasn’t the chicken mayo she’d ordered but a grilled chicken and mushroom thing and pointed this out to the server who took the tramezzini back. Shortly thereafter the person with whom the wife had placed her order came to the table to repeat the order (which had been restated to the person who’d served the wrong meal), as if there were something hugely complicated about this particular tramezzini.

 

Her food arrived only by the time I’d almost finished mine.

 

To be fair, the tramezzini were excellent with perfectly toasted bread and tasty fillings, though I did prefer mine to the chicken mayo.  Interestingly, there were no fries, which so often add the carbs on carbs of this kind of meal.

 

Afterwards, it was my turn to order more coffee and I got a slice of the baked cheesecake for me and a bit later, a chocolate brownie for the wife.

 

The cheesecake was good, though nothing will ever satisfy as a Basque cheesecake does, with the right touch of dryness, smoothness and subtle sweetness with the lemon cream topping bringing the lemon meringue style combination of tartness and sweetness, with the latter actually becoming too much over the duration. 

 

The wife thoroughly enjoyed her brownie. Like, a lot!

The flat white coffee was a mixed bag for me. The first one was very good but the second one tasted just off the mark. I don’t know whether the cheesecake spoiled the taste and flavour of the coffee or whether it just didn’t meet the standard of the first one.

 

The bill, including coffees and pastries, came to R494,00 before tip.

 

Other than the mishap with the wife’s dish, the service was efficient and friendly and the food was quite good, as tramezzini go.

 

The whole Montebello village is a delight to visit and it is great that both restaurants are dog friendly. It is a beautiful, relaxing place and we will definitely frequent it again and again.