Pairing cookies and hot chocolate at Revved Up Café

 14 October 2024

 

REVVED UP CAFÉ 

112 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town

 

The café at this motorcycle centre used to be called something else about 7 or 8 years ago on my last visit to the premises but if memory serves, it looks pretty much the same as it did then. It’s much cheaper to change the name and menu than to completely refurnish.

 

The style and get up is that of a simple, unassuming modern bistro with large windows towards Buitengracht Street and, if you want a seat further back, lovely views of an elegant sufficiency of all manner of motorcycles and related clothing. 

 

We were here for the R99,00 a person cookie and hot chocolate pairing, a novel concept to me and slightly mystifying, akin to the relative oddness of  a chocolate and sparkling wine pairing we did in Constantia many years ago.

 

Hey, novelty is novelty.

 

The wife and I met a colleague of hers over lunchtime and as the two of us hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, our eyes lit up when we saw the list of weekly specials at the back of the menu. For once, the “specials” are well-priced and budget friendly, such as the breakfast bagel and flat white for R70,00 which applies on Mondays. If memory serves, there is a cake and coffee special on Fridays.

 

The breakfast bagel was functional. The bagel seemed more like a bun with a hole and the crust was softer than one would expect from a proper bagel, but it was filled with a fried egg, cheese and bacon and quite satisfactory as a fast breaker though the wife’s egg was overcooked and she missed the lubrication of a runny yolk in an otherwise somewhat dry dish. My egg had a runny yolk. The rather substantial flat white was good.

Look, I won’t urge you to run right over for this special but at the price, it’s a decent offering and it’ll fill the belly.

 

The hot chocolate was divided into 2 servings of a white chocolate drink (pistachio and white chocolate) and 2 of darker chocolate (salted caramel and gingerbread), each with an appropriately flavoured cookie. The plastic place mat on which the items are presented helpfully indicates what’s what and the server didn’t spend much time on explaining what we should be looking out for in flavour, textural or taste combinations. Basically, she laid out the goodies and left us to it.

Frankly, the cookies  were just nice cookies and I doubt that one would reach nirvana from a mouthful of cookie and a swig of hot chocolate. The luxurious hot chocolate drinks were the stars of the show and for me the straightforward white chocolate (that had an interesting custardy taste) with a marshmallow and the salted caramel dark chocolate were the most enjoyable. I liked the gingerbread cookie  better than its accompanying chocolate. The pistachio chocolate was quite nice but not as bold as a dark chocolate.

 

As an experience it was very entertaining and highly enjoyable, and at the price it’s a no brainer if you’re partial to swigging hot chocolate, though it did take me a few hours to come down  from the sugar rush.

 

The standard breakfast menu looks interesting and I think I should return to taste test that. The view towards Buitengracht Street and Van Riebeeck Square, or what you can see of it through the trees, is not too shabby and somehow my macho meter rose from just being in the same room as all those hulking motorcycles.