Cape Town - My fellow Joburgers often ask what it is that makes me so obsessed with Cape Town. They simply don’t understand why I go there so often, a city most see as a holiday destination more than anything. The answer to that question is that there is a lot to do there and there’s something in the air that makes it feel like a hive of creative activity. There’s an energy to it that is far more relaxed, but no less interesting than Joburg.
I suspect the reason most people from out of town don’t get to experience this is because, as a friend of mine once pointed out: “People often come to Cape Town and only do touristy things.”
There’s a lot more, especially for those who are looking for fun and to socialise with locals, something that will definitely be a rare find out in Camps Bay, let alone Long Street, which is mostly populated by tourists and students and those who simply have no clue that the City Bowl has a lot more to offer.
When I went to Cape Town for the holidays at the end of 2012, I spent my first afternoon at Orphanage Cocktail Emporium. I ended up leaving way after midnight, dancing to the funky hip-hop that the DJ was throwing down and meeting new people as the night went by. It was a rather delightful evening for a Joburger who had earlier insisted on Long Street. Right now, Bree Street, parallel to Long and home to Orphanage, is the hippest street in the city under that famous rock called Table Mountain.
Just down the road towards the busier part of the street is &Union, which is perhaps one of the first few trendy bars to open up on Bree Street. Open from Tuesday to Saturday, &Union is a popular local watering hole that almost always has a festive mood in and outside the beer saloon that was previously a church. It opened in 2009 and is the brainchild of Rui Esteves and Brad Armitage, who are behind the craft beer brand of the same name.
A few metres up and across the road from &Union, you’d be hard pressed for parking on most afternoons as Cape Town’s hip and fabulous fill up Clarke’s bar and dining room. My personal favourite thing to do there? Pop open a quart of beer. You don’t get to do that very often, especially in Johannesburg, where the trendy crowds in the north of the city prefer popping bottles of Moët & Chandon and are not afraid to let you know just how tacky it is drinking beer out of a quart. Not here.
All everyone cares about is sipping and munching on Clarke’s popular cheeseburger or one of a selection of quick but great tasting sandwiches in the company of friends and other cool people – a lot of whom, it appears to me, are quite familiar with one another. Clarke’s also serves pizza and, from Monday to Friday, some affordable breakfasts, too.
One of the newest and most popular spots to open up in the past couple of months is La Parada, a tapas bar that doesn’t allow reservations. It is almost always packed to the brim. Not that this makes it any less of a pleasant place to have an afternoon drink, late lunch or perhaps a little catch-up session with friends right into the night.
James Townsend, who co-owns La Parada with his brother Michael, says the feedback from patrons has been great and there are plans to take the brand further with live music and entertainment and the introduction of different menus. “We have two La Parada restaurants, the first one is in Kalk Bay,” he said, adding that La Parada means “the station of the stop” in Spanish.
“The concept came from us as a family often going to Spain. Our one brother has lived there for many years and started a family there. When we went over for a visit, like anyone else I’m sure, we were really intrigued by the way the Spanish socialise around food. It seemed to us like the best of both worlds – food and drink combined into one long enjoyable experience. It’s something we thought would be great fun back home in South Africa.”
The bar at La Parada offers a small popular wine list that includes Spanish wines and signature, fresh-made cocktails. The tapas menu offers Serrano and pata negra jamon, a type of Spanish cured ham, among other things.
“The emphasis is on fresh and tasty ingredients,” Townsend said. “Customers sit at long communal tables, sometimes strangers next to each other, and this is something they really enjoy.”
This social vibe on Bree Street is one of the reasons entrepreneur Heather Moore loves being based there.
“It’s not a party street. The crowd is a little bit older and it’s more social than anything.”
Moore, an illustrator and fabric designer behind the Skinny laMinx brand, moved her studio there two years ago from Buitengracht Street.
“I live in Gardens and I used to walk along Bree to get to work in the mornings. There was this “to let” sign hanging on the door of a scooter repair shop. I didn’t have a shop then, just a studio, so this was the perfect opportunity to open a store alongside a studio. Bree Street is also closer to home so it all seemed to be the right combination.”
Back then, Moore said, Bree Street wasn’t what it is now. “There wasn’t a lot of establishments. The bakery across the road had just been renovated and extended and Café Frank was just a hole-in-the-wall. They’ve also extended, but there wasn’t a lot going on.”
Moore said she often grabs coffee with her husband at one of the cafes there and lunches at Café Frank. She frequents Alexandra Hojer’s Atelier, a boutique in a former warehouse – something that is very typical of a lot of establishments on Bree – bedecked with vintage furniture and decorations among the clothing rails. Gold lantern chandeliers hang from the ceiling in the studio at the back of the shop.
But more than just the pretty things and the sociable vibe that characterises Bree Street, Moore said the working environment was a very communal one. “I’ve organised a few meetings for business people on the street to just meet because, you know, you come to work and you go home and you often don’t get to meet people.
“There’s a really nice kind of security thing we all have going. If Chloe at Missibaba, just up the road, spots a sort of dodgy character outside her shop she will send an e-mail out to everyone to say watch out for this person, for example.”
“Bree Street feels like living in a village. We are very fortunate to have that kind of pleasant environment within the city.”
Swedish expat Alexandra Hojer opened her boutique on Bree almost two years ago and said she found the atmosphere there to be “a bit like Europe“.
“The shops are a bit scattered. There’s a rugged feel to it. It’s just a nice eclectic mix.”
Hojer started her eponymous label seven years ago, soon after her arrival in Cape Town. The boutique on Bree is her second, having opened her first on Kloof Street. “When I was looking for a new place, Bree Street felt off-beat but I liked the fact that it is central.”
Like Moore, Hojer frequents Café Frank for coffee. Upstairs from her shop and studio is a boxing studio where the designer and boutique owner exercises.
“I wouldn’t want for Bree Street to become too posh,” she said. “More people coming here is definitely good for business, but I would like for Bree to remain more or less the same.”
For photographer Andrew Brauteseth the culture on Bree Street brought the opportunity to start what he calls a “great personal project and experiment to try to market a street just by using a simple and beautiful photography blog”.
The blog, titled breestreet.co.za, features images of the various establishments and people socialising or simply just passing by.
“I used to hang out a lot on Bree Street, and still do, but about two years ago I used to only hang out at Caveau and it was still the early days of &Union,” Brauteseth said. “By documenting the nascent cool culture through photography I was aiming to create a new destination brand and position it as Cape Town’s hippest street.
“It’s amazing to see how it has exploded in the last two years with tons of new cool shops, restaurants and retail concept stores. It can now really own that position.” - Sunday Independent