Wasted at Shift Espresso Bar

 8 March 2025

 

SHIFT ESPRESSO BAR

2 Deer Park Drive, Vredehoek, Cape Town 

 

Pro tip: don’t chug-a-lug the Mimosas at Shift Espresso Bar just because it’s a hot, wind free day and your thirst is peaking. You may end up needing a fundamental snooze straight after lunch, voiding whatever other exciting plans you had for Saturday afternoon.

 

How did we get here, you ask?  By car, we say.

 

Uh.

 

Okay, so Shift turned out to be Plan C on the day.  

 

Plan A was a purported Colombia Market in De Waal Park, promising Colombian food, coffee and entertainment. We were almost giddy with excitement at the prospect of such an exotic event on our doorstep but our souls were almost crushed into nothingness when we arrived on site and found one food caravan promising Colombian food, I guess, staffed by two very palpable non-Colombians trying to serve whatever it was that they offered to a very long queue of hopeful people. That was the one, single prospect for food.

 

The coffee was purveyed by De Waal Park Espresso Bar but (I checked this later) it didn’t serve Colombian coffee at all though one could buy bags of the stuff from a vendor there.

 

The queue for coffee was also quite long.

 

We’d obviously expected too much, probably in common with the substantial  crowd of attendees. Whoever dreamt up this concept severely underdelivered and probably disappointed more people than just Von-Mari and me.

 

Seeing as how we had the Yorkies with us, Plan B needed to be a dog friendly venue, hence our quick drive up to Deer Park Drive to seek a table at Deer Park Café, a pet friendly joint that serves food of the highest quality.

 

Alas, at roughly noon, Deer Park Café was packed and with no prospect of the early availability of a table.

 

We’d known about Shift Espresso Bar, about 20 metres higher up on Deer Park Drive, for some while but had never thought of going there. I went to enquire about their hospitality towards small canines, tentatively offering to sit outside, and the server cheerfully invited us into the restaurant itself, even with the pooches.  Done deal.

 

The style of Shift is modern, chich bistro / café and this outlet is particularly lovely, with small tables under umbrellas on the stoep, but not necessarily shady enough on a hot day, and a larger interior space with banquette seating at the rear, for digital nomads and the like, a lounging corner on one side and several room dividers to created discreet spaces inside the larger space and kitchen and service counters against the far side of the room.

 

The stack doors to the outside were wide open and provided lots of natural light if not much ventilation to cool down the interior on this blazing day. One floor fan had to do the heavy lifting of providing some air conditioning.

 

There is an all-day breakfast menu as well as an extensive café lunch menu and the restaurant has a liquor licence, which means you can order, amongst other drinks, Amstal, Black Lable, Jack Black Larger and Fokof Larger. Perhaps they are dupes of the genuine products.

 

Never mind, we ordered Mimosas (R50,00 a glass). Two each. 

 

Where one often finds an 80:20 ratio in favour of the orange juice, the ratio in the Shift Mimosa is significantly weighted in favour the bubbly and it hits you when least expected.  Buzz, buzz a diddle it.

 

Shift wasn’t very busy when we arrived so there was no problem finding a table and both Yorkies were relatively quiet due to the lack of activity. Prinses didn’t even try to bite the server’s face off, something she’s prone to.

 

Von-Mari ordered the cheesy chicken tramezzini with chunky fries  (R135,00)

and I went for the chicken and broccoli bowl (R110,00) with chickpeas, quinoa and Feta and zero leaves, a characteristic that endeared me to the dish.

 

The tramezzini were well toasted, the cheesy chicken was sublime and moreish and the fries were perfectly crisp.

 

My chicken was beautifully grilled and deeply flavourful and the other elements were equally tasty and filling.  I’m really beginning to appreciate the tastiness of well-prepared quinoa.

The bill came to R440,00, before tip, and included a chocolate croissant (R45) to take home.

 

This Shift outlet is lovely, the service was good and cheerful and the food was excellent. I’d say, unless you want to eat food that’s closer to fine dining and prefer a crowded, noisy restaurant, it’s a very satisfactory alternative to Deer Park Café.  

 

Yes, we were tired and wasted and did find our way home straight after lunch to collapse onto our bed (all four of us) at about 13h45.