10 minute read
MUIZENBERG MUSINGS
AS HARD AS YOU MIGHT TRY, IT’S DIFFICULT NOT TO FALL IN LOVE WITH THE NEW DEEP SOUTH BY SUSAN HAYDEN
A MAGICAL DINING EXPERIENCE UNLIKE ANY OTHER
Tucked away on a little side street in Cape Town’s
city-centre culinary hub and set in the heart of the
Dorrance Winery – the only winery in the City – Bouchon
Wine Bar & Bistro has become a rm favourite among
locals and international guests alike, and is a must for
anyone visiting the Mother City. e intimate interior
and exclusive cellar table allow Bouchon’s patrons to
enjoy dinner in a setting unlike anything else in town.
Bouchon’s menu is concise, yet sophisticated, and seasonal,
so it changes regularly according to what is available.
You’ll nd mouthwatering tapas and sumptuous desserts,
and a nely balanced menu of homely classics such as the
popular wild-mushroom gnocchi and pea-and-artichoke
risotto, as well as carefully curated delicacies such as seared
scallops, pig’s head, duck liver, and ox tongue. e menu
is complemented by a wine list of local and international
gems, many of which are available by the glass. Pop past by
day for a wine tasting and view of Dorrance Winery’s urban
cellar and by night to experience the best of Bouchon.
If you don’t take life too seriously, you’ll t right in.
95 Hout Street, Cape Town City Centre, Tel: 021 422 0695 | Web: www.bouchon.co.za Email: info@bouchon.co.za
There’s something wonderfully worn-in about Surfer’s Corner in Muizenberg. Like an old Billabong hoodie, it’s slightly frayed at the edges, but soft and easy on the skin. There’s none of the hard, flashy sparkle of the Atlantic Seaboard and there isn’t a sequin in sight. This is a lived-on beach. When you stroll along the meandering sidewalk of Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro after sundown, you get a sense that this stretch of beach is just an extension of people’s homes. It’s where locals go to meet their trainer, do their yoga, play volleyball, or catch up with friends. Muizenberg beach has the same kind of feel. You’ll find women in their 70s heading out for a surf, young men on yoga mats, families, joggers, and dogs. People are there to live their lives, not to be seen. And it’s not just the soft sand and warm waters that make it a friendly place to visit. In the last few years, Muizenberg has become seriously cool. But nobody has cottoned on yet.
This seaside suburb blossomed in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s as a holiday Mecca for the mega wealthy. Millionaires and randlords bought sprawling second homes with endless views of the ocean. People travelled from all over the country to spend the summer bodysurfing, flashing their tanned legs at the Pavilion’s afternoon dances, and dining on sole and veal noisette in smart hotels. But the tide turned, as tides do, and by the 1960s, international travel and developments on the Garden Route and the Atlantic Seaboard had fast begun to lure holidaymakers away. Grand houses decayed and lost value, paint faded and chipped, and people went abroad and spent their money in foreign locations. Muizenberg fell out of fashion, and its hotels grew staid. The southeaster blew across a deserted beach and whipped at empty waves. But fashion, as we know, is perennial, and the tide has turned again.
As the city becomes more congested and information sources more overwhelming, a hearkening for a simpler life with more thoughts and fewer distractions has people migrating back to the deep south. Surfer’s Corner and its surrounding neighbourhood is basking in the love it has received over the past few years, and an ordinary Tuesday morning finds it far from empty. On York Road, over the railway line where graffitied yellow trains rumble clumsily along, we are drawn into a clothing store by the spectacle of a squid chandelier hanging happily from a high ceiling. Fashion designer Jacqueline Partridge, owner of Mystic Muiz (and Mystic Rose in Kalk Bay), tells us that she fashioned it out of plastic water bottles. ‘It nearly drove me mad,’ she admits. ‘I lay awake at night thinking about it.’ The store was supposed to stock her own clothing range, but somehow ended up becoming half hers, half vintage. ‘It’s a bit all over the place,’ she apologises. ‘I’m not sure it works.’ It does. We buy two of her designs, each sewn from a pale grey fabric as light and feathery as a cloud.
We stroll past the well-known Striped Horse Bar and the lesser-known Black Cat Café, both owned by Jurie Blomerus. We are tempted to go in to the former for a drink but, even for us, 11 am feels early for that sort of
thing. I’m told they play good live music and that their Striped Horse beer is excellent, and I make a mental note to come back at a more festive time of day. Instead we opt for coffee at the cafe, which Jurie bravely opened in June last year, smack in the middle of lockdown. Boere kitch, skull lamps and a large selection of tequila give it a layered, Mexico-meets-Karoo-dorpie feel. The effect is mesmerising. Across the way is a tiny Mozambican restaurant called Carla’s. I read the chalkboard menu through the closed window: Mozambican prawns, mussels and piri piri chicken. Some of everyone’s favourite things. Another mental note to return. The owner – Carla – is not around at that time of day, but I’m told she is quite a character.
Whether you’re a fan of the show or not, it’s difficult to walk past an eatery called Dr Phil-Afel without going in for a look. And it’s something of a surprise, being a Tuesday morning and all, to find a DJ called Kolawole Gbolahan spinning the vinyls. A life-size painting of Madiba, Haile Selassie, Albert Einstein and Jesus standing in front of their surfboards adorns a wall, and the big windows frame the sight of perfect sets of slate-coloured waves. My friend gazes at them longingly, wondering aloud whether she should go home and fetch her board. One of the founders of this shared space, Chad Cupido, has the hair we all wanted but didn’t get when we went for perms back in the ’80s. The building used to house a backpackers, but COVID-19 changed all that. Now it’s a vegan restaurant, a rare vinyl- and bookshop and a centre for healing. Chad shows us the adjoining yoga studio and invites us for a free hatha session that evening at 6 pm. The second-hand books have been picked out by someone with impeccable taste. For R50, I take home Peter Godwin’s Mukiwa, the only one of his I haven’t yet read.
Behind Surfer’s Corner, in Muizenberg village, is a minuscule bakery called The Real Bread Company, which specialises in artisanal sourdough, ciabatta and rye. Their bread is so good that everything sells out within a couple of hours. Across the road in his studio, artist Riaan Chambers constructs large, elaborate chandeliers inspired by walks on the beach. He uses shells, tumbled pieces of glass, leather and silks, and his creations are breathtaking. A guitarist sits in the doorway of an instrument repair shop, strumming away. ‘Do you always sit there playing?’ I ask. Everything about this place is surprising. A woman hunches over a pavement table, sewing. Gina’s Studio, owned by Austrian Gina Niederhumer, is a treasure trove of one-of-a-kind pieces of textile art. Her needlework, she explains, is an attempt to repair the broken bits of her childhood. The shop is whimsical and delightful. I buy a pair of turquoise earrings crocheted in Irish lace.
A Rastafarian called Judah lounges in a low chair in his shop, Roots Bar, the air thick with the aroma of incense. He grudgingly turns the pumping reggae music down to tell us about David Icke, and shows us his range of healing lotions made by Rastafarian women. He’s disgruntled that we are not investigative journalists, and wants us to use the word ‘emporium’ when we describe his shop. I ask him to speak a bit of the Khoikhoi, which he is currently studying, and he obliges. Slowly he warms to us, and smiles
and poses for the camera. We ask him where else we should go and he sends us to Dimples Dumpling House. This is the new kid on the block. ‘We’re not actually open yet,’ Egyptian owner Moses Tadros informs us, in between serving customers. It’s hard to focus on anything that he’s saying because I’m distracted by the whiteness of his ridiculously perfect teeth, but I concentrate hard enough to learn that he’s part of an NGO called Exodus Youth, which helps kids from Capricorn and Lavender Hill obtain their matric certificates.
A diminutive barefoot woman who’s been talking to her friend in the road asks us what we’re doing. She shows us inside her house, which has had all its inner walls removed to make space for a dance studio, and she tells us how similar human beings are to jellyfish.
In the window of a bookshop called Paper Moon, I spot a book called Girl on the Edge by author Ruth Carneson. It narrates the traumatic childhood of a little girl growing up with communist parents perpetually on the run from the apartheid police. I remember that she, too, lives in Muizenberg, a few blocks away from the beach. After reading her memoir some years ago, I was captivated by her story. I messaged her on Facebook and she was generous enough to invite me to her home for tea. This sort of unlikely event seems less unlikely here. People aren’t as guarded; they’re more willing to let you into their lives.
Perched all alone on the windy dunes between the vlei mouth and Sunrise Beach is a beautiful old Herbert Baker house with dark windows that gaze wistfully out to sea. Called Vergenoeg, it was built in 1915 for Alpheus Williams, then General Manager of De Beers Consolidated Mines. It was on the market in the early 1980s for a cool R1 million, and is rumoured to be owned by Mary Slack, Harry Oppenheimer’s daughter. This house that watches the shifting sands, bears witness to the many changes that have happened over the past century: the money that flowed in and out, the people, the politics, the power. It has a closed-off look about it, its secrets safely locked within. It’s living to see another day, withstanding the weather, just like the neighbourhood in which it resides.
SCAN HERE
FOR A VIRTUAL TOUR OF THIS EXTRAORDINARY SUBURB IN THE DEEP SOUTH
