Naked Coffee: Nice place, pity about the food.

 12 September 2024

 

NAKED COFFEE

2 Wisbeach Road, Sea Point, Cape Town

 

This was our first visit to this street since a decidedly dismal dinner experience at the Duchess of Wisbeach, way before COVID. The building across the street from Naked Coffee where the Duchess once operated from has been razed to the ground. I thought the soil might have been salted like the Romans did to Carthage to prevent any resurgence but when I saw the name of the establishment blazoned on a building on Main Road I realised that bad pennies do return.

 

Those were the thoughts that ran through my mind as we did brunch in the modern, elegant and quite chic Naked, with a floor that’s partly polished, dark concrete and partly honeycomb shaped tiles (as if previously industrial premises hadn’t been completely gentrified yet), dark wooden chairs and polished marble topped tables. There is floor-to-ceiling shelving against one side wall with deli stuff and pastries and the requisite banquette seating against the opposite side wall, with the small tables for two patrons. Or just the working space of MacBook users.

 

The menu (all day breakfast included) is extensive, interesting and the food reads as enticing.

 

The coffee is quite strong, which is to the wife’s taste but not so much to mine. Even adding extra milk to my cappuccino didn’t mitigate the strong bitterness.

 

I chose shakshuka with a flatbread (really a pita) (R130) and it was, as they say, what the box promised.  The eggs were poached to order, the dish had flavour and a relatively subtle hit of chilli and the bread had been baked well.

 

The wife ordered the breakfast stack of poached egg, bacon, and smashed avocado on a rösti (R130). She was disappointed. The basic flaw with the dish was that it was not seasoned, neither the rösti nor the generous quantity of avocado, and the bacon was the only salty element on the plate. The Hollandaise-esque schmear on the plate was colourful yet dolefully lacking in taste.  I get that the kitchen might think a patron would want to select how much seasoning they’d want on the avocado but it’s criminal not to cook rösti properly seasoned.

 

In concept, the breakfast stack is a good dish but it wasn’t executed well.

 

The wife chose the canelé (R20) as dessert. I googled it, as I’d never heard of it, and the description is this:

A canelé is a small French pastry flavoured with rum and vanilla with a soft and tender custard centre and a dark, thick caramelized crust. It takes the shape of a small, striated cylinder up to five centimetres in height with a depression at the top.

 

The canelé the wife received jibed with the visual description but was also lacking in taste and flavour with the barest bottom note of rum and not much custard.  It was okay and it was cheap.

I chose a date, banana and walnut slice (R28), not the best of choices. The crumb was too dry for it to be served as naked (duh) on the plate as it was; I asked for some butter  but it should be served with custard. Also, the immediate impression on the palate was of fruit cake rather than date, and the banana flavour dominated. Not a success.

The bill came to R484,00 before tip.

 

The ambience of Naked is quite welcoming, it’s clearly a working space for digital nomads, the service was exemplary (though at least two members of the service staff couldn’t explain to us what a canelé is) and the coffee is good if strong coffee is your fave.  However, it seems that the menu overpromises on what the kitchen delivers.