Superette

Well there hasn’t been many posts recently so I figured I’d dump some good things down in this lonely little space.

Who knew funerals could be megatastic dancehall bonanzas!? Well the Ghanaians did, that’s who! Have a look at this article from NYTimes to see where the small, ready to explode child is getting his groove on. Hot damn I hope the trend travels south, what a great way to spend a weekend.

“The parties are fervently anticipated, promoted weeks in advance with online advertisements — “Save this day,” one said, “as I celebrate the life of my mother” — or with stacks of glossy fliers that pile up at African restaurants and groceries. The fliers often resemble theater playbills, with photos of the grieving family and friends, known as the “chief mourners,” as well as credits for the M.C. and technical staff.”

Awesome.

Here’s a great item of news that I only just got wind of: HOOTERS is in South Africa! For realz. They first opened one in Durban, then Johannesburg and now in boerewors draped Edward Street in Durbanville. I don’t think they’ve completed the Edward Street venue yet but you can join their Facebook page here and you’ll be the first to know. Also for all you aspiring well stacked birds out there get yourselves over to this link where you can sign up to Become a Hooters Girl. WOOP WOOP!

And last but not least their menu is pretty great, similar to Spur (but no-one will ever top Spur) and with more of a US feel - items like Daytona Beach Wings and even oysters. I think an all round guaranteed success.

On a more toned down note: the always quietly amusing works of Michael Taylor will be on show at What If The World Galleries for his show entitled The Tenacious Tree Huggers on Wednesday the 20th of April from 18h00. His work is great and no doubt this will be no exception. You can check out his website here and read more about the show here.

Toodles.

So here’s a little bit of last minute news: Tonight we have Richard Hart’s opening up at What If The World gallery. But more importantly tonight we’ve got Chili Dogs! We got Frickles! We got Frito’s!

What’s a Chili Dog you say?

Why its a big ol’ sausage smothered in meat and beans and cheese!

This is what you’re going to be doing to your Chili Dog.

What’s a frickle you say?

Why its a goddamn deep-fried pickle!

Frickles!

If you don’t know what a Frito is then you can just go to hell.

It starts at 18h30, we’ll be selling liquor, and there’s some art upstairs if you’re bothered.

You can read more about Richard Hart here, his work is actually pretty damn mega.

So we got our display fridge last week and hot damn it looks good and it’s just the right kind of chilly. We’ve mostly stocked it with Maunder’s Manfood and drinks for now but we’ve also put in some of the amazing Cloud Cottage goat’s cheese that we use almost everyday in our kitchen. It is such great stuff, we order a box in at a time and they courier it down to us from the Tsitsikamma area. I didn’t know this but goat’s cheese is seasonal and so there’s a couple of months that it’s not available, but we order such a big box just before the end of the season so that we never run out! Smart ek se. The farm uses organic biodymnamic methods and the Saanen goats feed on fynbos and the surrounding pastures. You can read more about the farm here.

You’re out!

We’ve also been selling Honest Chocolate for a while but it gets a little warm at the Superette so we’ve had to keep their boxes of bonbons in the fridge so now that they can hang out front since we got the display fridge we’re hoping that people will catch onto them a little more. We’ve also just placed our first order for their slabs and for their spread. In my last post I wrote a little about The Mast Brothers, the boys brought back their Black Truffle chocolate and the Serrano Pepper. I also had their Sea Salt chocolate last year and I hate to be a knob about it but fact is fact - their packaging is spectacular; their chocolate kind of sucks. And when Anthony dropped off one of Honest’s new slabs for us to taste it became pretty clear just how much The Mast Brother’s chocolate sucks and how much Honest rules. It’s not like I’m pushing the local thing, I don’t care if 12 empty jumbo jets had to fly in that special little slab of Honest all the way from New Guinea and 17 Afghani child labourers lost their fingers in the packaging process. I’d still choose the slab of chocolate made by Honest over The Mast Brother’s any day.

Packing precious cargo.

We’re also going to be selling more of The Drift’s veg and we’ll soon be getting in Sweet Temptation Toffees. But our biggest windfall was last week when Kirsty from Tilly’s Hand Made Ice Cream got in touch with me. She’s been selling at The Field Office for a while and she mailed us asking if she could drop off some samples… HOLY TITS were those some samples or what!? We immediately ordered a batch and so if you come round please do yourself a favour and get a little tub, it’s vokkin’ awesome.

Another really exciting thing thats going to be happening soon, tomorrow actually, is MEAT CLUB. My oldest and most retarded friend Matt’s awesome dad is running this Saturday morning stroke of genius and the intention behind it is to educate beer drinking, sausage swinging men a little more about their meat. For now its just a gang of Matt’s boyfriends getting together at the butchery for the first one, which is happening this Saturday, but I suspect they’re going to have to run them every couple of weeks because a better idea has never been thought - Meat Education and Beer.

MEEEEEEEEEEEEEAT. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER

Now before I get onto the really good stuff there must be a mention of the talented and always gracious Ms. Daniella Mooney who had her opening up at What If The World this past Saturday. She toys with wood, misspent dreams and, during her days down in the kitchen, my wretched soul. She’s created something beautiful and you can see it until the end of the month.

So the highlight of recent weeks would have to be the return of Happy Dave, only this time its Happy Dave AND The Louisianans! Last year around this time I wrote a post about the Oysters that Dave cooked up for us on his annual trip down here and how I tried and failed to recreate his Oyster Phenomenon for a Supper Club we did. Dave and his very good friend Demian are food bevok, Demian especially likes to put food in his face a LOT, and he loves ALL of it. He even had a midnight meal at a 7Eleven, something along the lines of rice and curry, he survived AND thought it was the best shit he’s tasted. Freak. So we’re going to be doing a little food cook off and I’m hoping to get a lot of tips from them since they worked in the States as line cooks before they got into tattooing, Dave has his own shop called Uptown Tattoos in New Orleans and Demian is based in Atlanta at Southern Start Tattoo. Unfortunately Billy who works at Dave’s shop but who also worked as a line cook won’t be able to be here for the cook off since he’s flying home on Saturday but he’s left us with something even more precious than tips on how to cook a Gumbo, he’s left us with MUTHAFUCKIN’ BOUNCE RAP! Below you can see Billy in the throes of his Bounce Rap demonstration that he’s convinced will be tearing up all Cape Town dance floors by this time next year.

The streets of New Orleans and the beginning of the Cape Town Bounce Craze

So my donation to this effort is to help inform. So here is a great article to get you started, but more importantly here is a little video advertising a DVD that I can highly recommend if you want to get that authentic bounce. Hopefully one of these days we can get together a real Louisiana Shrimp Boil at the Superette and you can all get your thongs on and come round and show us your Ass Bounce…. AWESOME!

So we reopened Monday and surprisingly enough its not such a bad thing. Business is good, summer fruits are here, the wind is blowing, the flies are everywhere, the day starts at 7, the heat starts at 6, Aisha has left… Actually it totally SUCKS BALLS!

No, that’s all a lie. Except for the part about Aisha leaving. She’s been part of the making of Superette and without her there’s no doubt we would never have succeeded, not a chance. People would have come. But they’d never have come back. Luckily we kept her exit mostly a secret so it’ll give us a chance to convince the regulars to keep coming back. But it’s a tough road ahead and I hope we can manage it because even though it’s been only 3 days of No Aisha Superette, they’ve been poephol dark days. We’ll miss you Aisha Most Beautiful Person On The Planet Besides Your Totally Hot Husband and Future Hottest Hybrid Ever To Be Conceived.


As far as the flies are concerned it seems like this heat has brought them down upon us all over Cape Town. We’re trying everything to keep them at bay - candles, lemon drops, the tennis racket fly zapper, running after them…. the list goes on. So please bear with us, this is one battle that I think everyone is struggling with and it’s not because we’re a filthy bunch, it’s just nature taking its course.

Well enough of that and on to more whining. So Beefcake Jardine Jason informed me with relish the other day that some twat decided to ‘twitter’ about how Beefcake’s (Jason, not the Homosexual Burger Joint) Lamb Sandwich is better than ours because our aubergine is too greasy. Well Mr. Twat, we’ve de-oiled our aubergine so why don’t you bring your opinionated self back here and see what you think.

The Mighty Beefcake on the left, Mr Twat on the right.

Last year I started selling my Maunder’s Manfood products at the Neighbourgoods Market and its been a pretty cool little venture. I sell a lot of the sauces and dressings that I use at the Superette like the Pesto, Salsa Verde, Aioli, Baby Rosa’s…

…but my main focus is on pickles, preserves and the kind of savoury stuff that you hate when you’re 5 but love when you’re 35 - Pickled Onions, Gherkins, Smoked Hot Sauce, Anchovy Butter, Piccalilli, Pickled Eggs… You get my meaning I’m sure. Anyway, come check it out, this Saturday I hope to be throwing in my Scotch Eggs and with some luck there’ll be a proper Pork Pie or two.

Well enough of this whoring out my wares. Welcome to 2011, thanks for reading this far and hot damn I’d swear on my left nut if I had one that I’ll bloody well write more this year.

One last word - I searched Beefcake to get some decent images for the ‘Jason Beefcake’ commentary and there was just so much good stuff that I had to include as many as I could. I hope you liked it.

So it’s been months, and months. And months. Since the last Supper Club. Massively lame but what’s done is done and it’s time to move onward and upward to the next Supper Club. I figured we should do something Tasty, and something that will include large doses of Merriment. Tasty + Merriment = Cholo! and so Mexican Fare it shall be. Admittedly I doubt a Tasty, Merry Cholo ever graced any street corner, but whatever.

For the last 2 months there has been this sudden desire for all things Mexican; two new Mexican joints have opened recently - San Julian Taco and Tequila and El Burro; plus a friend has started talking about his plans to open up a Mexican place of his own; and then two old friends returned from a New York jaunt with many a Tale of the Taco Truck and so it just seemed silly to ignore all the signs and not have a night of slow cooked flesh and Margherita’s.

So next week Thursday is the night, the date is the 25th and we’ll be serving from 19h00. I wanna make it cheap as hell and pack the mouth’s in so although historically we’ve had a limit of 34 people for our Supper Clubs I figure with this kind of food and these kinds of Margherita’s that we could squeeze in 50, hell maybe even 60! I’ll have the menu up in our Supper Club section later this evening as well as the price.

In other news Hayden Phipps stopped by a little while back to photograph Athi’s new show and then came down to take some badly needed food and people photo’s for the Superette, he did a great job and I’ve also uploaded some of the photo’s he took of Athi’s show because they are equally great. You can see more in the Gallery section and on the Facebook page.

A little while ago after we did the Supper Club for Cameron Platter’s show he mailed me with a bunch of questions and asked me to answer them and include as many images as I saw fit. The five words that we said to each other when he was down here for his show was enough to know that Cameron is, for lack of a better phrase - A Very Good Dude. The other day I Googled myself, because I am pathetic, and low and behold there was the ‘interview’, rereading it a couple of months after writing it I can’t deny that there are two words that keep pulsating through my brain: ‘Chop’ and ‘Me’. But again: whatever. I felt quite special that he was interested in asking me anything at all so thanks Cameron, any time your gut needs filling you know where to go. He also chatted to Ashley and Athi and they’re well worth reading.

Recently I added a new Lamb Sandwich to the menu, it’s served with grilled Aubergine, a Garlic Yoghurt Dressing and Salsa Verde. It’s been selling really well and it’s nice to have a new item on the Sandwich menu. You can only do the Pork or Chicken so many time, although we’ve still been throwing in the Sirloin and the Tuna every now and then to mix it up a bit.

On an incredibly happy note we’re elated to tell you that we’ll be closed from the 18th of December to the 10th of January… BEVOK.

So since I hardly ever write anything for this damn blog anymore that means I’ve got lots to tell you this time around. Consider it a Birthday Bumper Edition.

If you’ve been to the Superette recently you’ll notice that we’ve put in a bunch of small tables in the front so we can seat more people. It’s pretty cool and has added to the café feel of Superette and now there is a little more space and a little less waiting on our Retarded Saturdays. We’ve also decided that we’re not taking reservations on Saturdays anymore. It gets us into trouble every time when we have a bunch of people standing at the door waiting for a table while we have a big table sitting wide open waiting for the 11:00 reservation. It’s frustrating for everyone involved and so now we do First Come, First Serve on Saturdays but feel free to make your bookings during the week.

Another thing we’ve decided to do is Table Service on Saturdays. It’s taken us a year to figure it out but we’ve realised that we’ve gotta give up the whole Superette notion (ie. Counter Service) on Retarded Saturdays. No more counter service, we’re going to have customers seated at their table and waiters stationed in front to sort everyone out. This way there are less mistakes and forgotten orders, no more queues of people trying to pay for their meal that took an hour to get, PLUS! And this is my favourite part - you suckers can’t keep changing your tables! So wish us luck with this one, hopefully this Saturday it’ll be in place. Shame on us if it isn’t.

This month we’ve got a couple of things going on. The We ♥ Real Beer Festival is happening on Thursday (the 23rd) and by the looks of things Aisha and I will be serving up our Pork Belly Sandwich so check it out if you’ve got time, we’re closed on Friday since it’s a Public Holiday so it’s definitely worth the trip.

Then on Wednesday the 06th of October we’ll be feeding the masses for Athi-Patra Ruga’s opening. Since it’s guaranteed to be heaving we’re not sure what to cook yet - something we can just slap onto the plate and you can shovel down standing because I don’t think there’ll be much seating available at this one unless you get there early. But we’ll post the menu as soon as we decide.

So with all those busy evenings I realised a Supper Club this month will be out of the question and so our next one will probably only be on the 14th of October. But we’ll let you know as soon as we do.

We’ve also had a couple of nice reviews recently. The Foodie wrote about us, CapeTownMagazine.com wrote a nice article too and there was also a mention of us and of course The Neighbourgoods Market in the New York Post. The boys were also featured in Monocle in July, unfortunately I can’t put a link to the article because you need to be a subscriber BUT I can put in this GREAT photo.

Those are some special mugs guys!

Last week we were lucky enough to host Missibaba’s launch, we weren’t lucky enough to get paid in product but Aisha and I are making our way over to the studio this week to see what we can hustle out of them. You can see some pics from the night and of the bags here.

I stole that photo off Skattie What Are You Wearing, I hope that’s not taking liberties.

Just before I left we started stocking Bon Vivant, it’s a bottled smoothie and its pretty mega, it makes it easy and enjoyable to put good things into your system first thing in the morning and it’s reasonably priced. It’s a little bit of a bummer that the packaging is straight from Innocent in the UK but that doesn’t detract from the flavour or quality.

And one last thing: Does anyone have Donovan The Knife Sharpener’s number. He used to stop by but he hasn’t been here in a long, long time and we miss him terribly, more importantly our knives ache for his loving touch. Unfortunately his phone number walked out the door along with my phone when one of the Crack House Crew decided it needed some fresh air and a new owner so… if anyone has his contact details please let us know.

Thanks for reading and see you soon.

Hi all, we’re unfortunately closed tomorrow - Eskom is doing some work in Albert Road so we get a holiday! We figure if we can’t make us or you coffee that we might as well stay home.

See you Thursday.

So I searched Google Images looking for an image for this post. This is what I searched: beer drinking soccer cheeseburgers art. And this is what I found:

I think it works.

We’re not sure if it’s a stroke of genius or a stroke of idiocy - Dan Halter’s gallery opening has been scheduled to happen on the same night as the World Cup Semi-Final. I think that part was the idiocy. But the genius part is Cameron decided to get in a plasma screen for the Superette so we can watch the football from here! Uber Mega Geniusness. So come check out the Show and then come down and get some Burgers, if we have any left, and watch the game with us while you drink our Beer - don’t worry we’ll bring in the Black Label for this one.

Also I have put up the menu for next weeks Vegetarian Supper Club, you can check it out here. The cost is R140 a head, tables are available from 19:00. We will have a bar running and corkage is R50 a bottle. If you are more than 5 people we will need a deposit of R200.

Thanks for reading and see you soon.