Love a Little Local: Swing into Harbour Road

Love a Little Local: Swing into Harbour Road

Writer Taylum Meyer

If you have not yet paid a visit to Harbour Road in Kleinmond, you are missing out. Right at the waterfront, Harbour Road is lined with colourful buildings occupied by a wide variety of interesting businesses. One can easily spend hours exploring and enjoying the restaurants, cafés, galleries, shops and now also a tattoo studio which recently opened.

Another new addition to this popular destination is the Swing In Coffee Shoppe right at the bottom of Harbour Road, owned and run by Madelein Kruger and Kevin Pereira. Although she has a background in education and loved working with children, Madelein’s other passion has always been working with food. Despite having no culinary training, she went on to open a restaurant and coffee shop called Die Koei, which she ran whilst teaching Grade 12 at an all-boys school in Vereeniging.

Die Koei grew from strength to strength thanks to Madelein’s creative and delicious dishes, and 16 years after opening, she sold the restaurant to move to Nelspruit, where she continued teaching. It didn’t take long before she decided to open a new restaurant there with the help of her daughter, Cristelle Kriel, called The Farmstall which (no surprises here) also enjoyed years of success before the mother and daughter team moved to the Overstrand.

For their new venture in Kleinmond, Madelein contacted her longtime friend, Kevin, and asked him if he would consider becoming a partner in a new restaurant. Kevin immediately jumped on board and Swing In opened its doors in November last year. Kevin joined them a short while later in December after moving from the North West to run the business side of Swing In, so that Cristelle and Madelein could focus on food and hospitality.

The restaurant is playfully decorated and was named after the suspended table-and-swing-seat set, which now sits just in front of the restaurant’s doors, thought up by Madelein and made by Cristelle’s fiancé in Betty’s Bay.

Swing In uses the same unique menu that Madelein created for The Farmstall, and one of the most popular items on the menu are the Moerse Messy Milkshakes which were created by Cristelle in Nelspruit, when she wasn’t busy breaking national swimming records and competing for the Springboks. The milkshakes are everything their name says they are – moerse and messy – making consuming them quite the experience. Swing In also offers milkshakes which are spiked with liquor for those who are looking for a bit of a kick

Click on the newspaper below to read more (see page 10).