Urban Playground: the venue sucks, the food rocks.

 28 May 2025

 

URBAN PLAYGROUND

Corner of Coronation Road & Van Wyk Street, Maitland, Cape Town.

 

I’ve never seen a greater disconnect than that between Urban Playground’s website blurb and menu, and the restaurant itself.  It’s like a boxcar racer with a V8 engine.

 

Let me explain. The website has a rather marvellous, if slightly over developed sense of self; the mission statement and the menu items, both in type and price, suggest a sophisticated upmarket eatery, albeit in the industrial wastelands of Maitland.

 

When you step inside the restaurant, palpably previously part of the parking lot covered to make a dining space, it might just as well be a beer and pizza joint that time forgot, with distressed bench table seating and dismal decoration.  

 

Low budget would be a misnomer as it would suggest the existence of an interior design budget. 

 

Yes, it that’s bad.

 

The website is damn good, though.  Really sells the sizzle.  

 

The incongruity is that the food is rather good, at a price that’s a far cry from cheap and cheerful.

 

We met two friends from the UK for supper. A friend of theirs had recommended Urban Playground and Von-Mari had read several favourable reviews of the place, so it seemed legit despite the dubious positioning. 

 

The dining space is relatively small and the kitchen seems to be about double that size. There’s a full on brigade in proprietary clothing, hyping themselves up with frequent mass exhortatory exclamations, cooking up the eclectic items on the menu.

 

Our friends drank Coke Zero, as did Von-Mari later, though she started with sparkling water and I had a tall can of Windhoek Draught, something I’d not seen before. 

Signalling the culinary aspirations of the kitchen, we were served kudu croquette amuse bouche in Japanese soup spoons. The croquettes were perfectly crisp with the slightly dry, chunky texture I expect from kudu and was, for me, under seasoned. A nice start but not a bravura bite.

Our paid starter was a shared trio of bobotie spring rolls (R75) that were crisp and gloried in the characteristic curry flavour profile. Could easily have had a plateful on my own. 

After some debate, there were two orders for the Thai pork belly with Prik Nam Pla sauce (a combination of fish sauce and Thai chilli), sticky rice, stir fry vegetables and a mushroom soy sauce (R260,00),  one for the 200g beef fillet espitada basted Prego sauce and on a bed of brown rice, black beans and red lentils (R350) and I ordered the sous vide cooked and roasted whole Eisbein with parsley mashed potato, pickled purple cabbage, ketchup and German mustard (R320). (I’d read a review that said something to the effect that this Eisbein had finally illustrated to the diner what Eisbein should be).

 

The espitada was good and the Thai pork bellies were excellent with succulent pork, a good combination of textures and a deeply flavourful sauce to bring it all together.

 

The Eisbein was humongous, visually impressive and, ultimately, proved to be far too much meat for me. The crisp exterior was where the flavour was. The more I ate, and the colder the meat got, the less flavourful the pork tasted and though I thought I was hungry I was replete much quicker than anticipated. Then it became a slog. I abandoned the Eisbein less than a quarter of the way in and took the rest home.  

The following evening, I repurposed the leftover Eisbein for pulled pork tacos for supper and on Friday I made Von-Mari a breakfast of toasted bagel halves with cream cheese, guacamole and slices of Eisbein. The room temperature meat was far tastier, really moreish, than served at the restaurant. Perhaps Eisbein is at its best sliced like gammon at Christmas.

 

The rustic, roughly mashed potato and pickled cabbage were good. The Eisbein needed a sauce though. Before I even started eating, I knocked over the small container of ketchup (or BBQ sauce?) and though someone brought a cloth to clean the spillage on the floor and on my  pants, no-one offered to refill the ketchup/sauce.  (I know, I could’ve / should’ve asked).

 

On the dessert front there was one order for Deb’s lemon zest cheesecake (R85), one for Vietnamese banana tart (R95) with coconut cream, gooseberries and salted caramel

and Von-Mari and I shared the Jack Daniel’s honey malva pudding (R85).

It seemed that the cheesecake and banana tart were good. The malva pudding and the sublime Jack Daniel’s honey custard (crème Anglaise, really) were exceptional.

 

The final curtain was two trays, each with two small ceramic cups of cold, black rooibos tea, small tumblers of sparkling water and two fudgy chocolates that were so good Von-Mari bought some to take home.

 

The  total bill came to R1680,00 before tip.

 

The service was okay, the food was excellent and the ambience sucked. I don’t quite know why Urban Playground exists. It’s not a date night restaurant (if you want to spend that much on dinner, there are umpteen classier options in Cape Town) and it’s not a cheap and cheerful night out with your mates either (as if you’d want to drive all that way).  

 

Even though the food was really excellent, the prices felt exorbitant for what it was, given the whole experience. We don’t mind paying a premium for great food, service and ambience, but a premium price would require the whole package and Urban Playground does not deliver that package.  It’s unlikely that we’ll return.