South Africa: Cape Town—Food Edition
Posted By Sika on February 23, 2009
There was Ari’s Souvlaki, of course. There was also sushi that first morning. We ate it at the earliest hour we could find a place serving it. I had been talking about eating sushi for a good three months before we went to Cape town. Actually, to be fair, many of us in my group started to talk about sushi and the next time we’d eat it while we were still in Philly. The sushi was a little less than I was expecting. I love the feeling of sashimi melting sweetly in the mouth, dissolving against the saltier, soy-sauced, more firmly textured rice, and the bite of wasabi that always catches me a little bit by surprise. I’m not sure if my disappointment came because the sushi in Cape Town is actually inferior to the sushi in Seattle or because of how much I’ve built it up in my last year and a half of sushi abstinence.
On Tuesday, before we headed out for Franschhoek, we had fish and chips at the place next to the backpackers—they were hot and salty and just the right kind of greasy. We took our portions into the car and really enjoyed even that part of it as something neither of us had done for a long time.
There was a Mexican restaurant around the corner from the hostel that served excellent American-style Mexican food, which I wasn’t really expecting out there. We had fajitas all full of sizzly-ness and guacamole.
We ate at a jazz restaurant called the Green Dolphin, where the jazz was decent and the fish was better. The jazz was the kind of music that you feel bad for talking because people are performing but it is meant to be in the background and eminently forgettable.
There was also the pizza place, the gourmet hamburger place, and R caffe on Long Street. We had breakfast New Year’s Day at R Caffe, which reminded me a bit of that bakery on 15th Ave in Cap Hill. I almost expected to see doors made into tables from when I used to get Sunday morning pastries there. There were nice, whole grain breads, and omelets, and they let me rescue a peach from their fruit salad so I could sacrifice it to the taste gods.
Ok, so that’s it for where we ate, at least until we got to Franschhoek and Gansbaai and Agulhas.
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