Friday, December 17, 2010

Joburg Special - Part 5: Lize "The Unicorn" Kay

Lize is a mover-and-shaker within media circles. She has a résumé that will frighten the words right off most people’s humble CV’s. Lize is fuelled by Cosmos and cupcakes. And, while her unicorn alter ego isn’t fighting crime, Lize is working for 2oceansvibe radio, Jacaranda, SuperSport and writing a very successful blog. It seems that Lize is the Yellow Pages of what is hot and happening in both Jozi and CT. Definitely one to keep on speed dial when you need to know… anything. Check out her video below. 


If Youtube is being lame, try this. 




Joburg Special - Part 4: I Collect Gingers

We collected a ginger to chat about her project “I Collect Gingers”. Anthea Pokroy is a fascinating artist with a passion for gingers. She collects them in large numbers and photographs and interviews her ginger subjects. She chatted to us about everything ginger. Check out her video below.


If YouTube is being lame, try this.



Joburg Special - Part 3: The #MINIgetaway Mini Countryman

For those of you that thought we were selfishly driving around in the #MINIgetaway without running you through some of its awesomeness, you’re wrong. Check out the hottest 4-door on the market. IT HAS EVERYTHING. Brandslut, Mike Sharman and Chris guide you through some of the awesomeness in the video below.


If YouTube is being lame, try this.



Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Joburg Special - Part 1: Brandslut and Mike Sharman showing Chris around.

Having met the “Amazeness” of Mike Sharman in Cape Town we couldn’t miss this opportunity to hook up with him in his hometown, Jozi. Mike helped us “Make out with our steak out”. He was one of the awesome and worthy benefactors of the Mini Countryman launch and kindly let Chris jump in and smash out some Secret City Project interviews in his #MINIgetaway. Mike lined up some of the hottest local bloggers and we were whipped around town to see the best of Jozi.

As a Cape Town lover Chris couldn’t help but admit that Joburg is doing something very right. Check out Brandslut showing Chris and Mike some of the sweetest hidden spots. We were taken to the insanely cool 44 Stanley and educated on the ways of the Jozi town. There was a lot packed into a short time, as Joburgers do.

Check out the video below.


For those of you with lame YouTube try this. 



Monday, December 13, 2010

Caroline Vincent

Caroline is one of the bright new talents stepping out of Michaelis School of Fine Arts in Cape Town. We heard about her awesome new project and decided to swing by and check out what all the fuss was about. We hardly expected to be led under a staircase and into a mysterious closet and bathroom… Needless to say, we were pleasantly surprised; we found a fascinating collection of beautifully sculpted bathroom products meticulously carved out of Sunlight Soap and wax. Caroline spoke of her personal experiences and let us into the thinking behind her exceptional installation.

Check out her video below. 


If your YouTube is blocked try this.



Friday, December 10, 2010

Herman the Hare Krishna

We picked Herman up on Kloof. He appeared to be talking very seriously to someone about a pamphlet or something, so, when he'd finished, we offered him a ride around the block. Turns out, Herman is a newly converted Hare Krishna. He now stays in that beautiful, massive temple in Rondebosch, and follows a really hectic daily routine of meditation and vegetarianism. It was really interesting to hear how he got where he is today, and what his religion means to him. Check out the video below.


Try this if YouTube is blocked.




Thursday, December 9, 2010

Jared's Taxi Ride

Chris met Jared in a photography store. Unsurprisingly he is a photographer. He's from Long Beach, California and of South African decent. He is passionate about this country, and particularly about Cape Town, where he now lives. Jared has spent the last six years and his entire life savings shooting and self-publishing a mammoth compilation of photography chronicling the life and culture of South Africa. The work is catagorised and then graphically augmented by a tribe of the country’s best graphic designers and tattoo artists. The result is seriously impressive. We picked Jared up and gave him a ride to his latest exhibition and performance space in town. Check out his taxi ride below. And his blog here.


YouTube Uncool. Try this.




Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Eunis


We picked Eunis up on Adderly Street. She was on the way to the deeds office to locate the title deed to her house, which she is trying to sell. She was accompanied by the prospective buyer of said house, Thando, and we couldn’t figure out why they were both so pissed off. You could cut the tension with a teddy bear. The situation was further aggravated by our inability to locate said deeds office, due to our extremely unacceptable taxi driving skills. OH well.

However, Chris soldiered on, and the pair relaxed eventually. He even pulled out some suiwer  bombaliscious Afrikaans moves. Extremely funny.

YouTube blocked. Here we go...




Monday, December 6, 2010

The Unfortunate Consequences of Common Sense

After our incredibly inspired reworking of our corporate ID, we hit the streets to try and garner a few customers for interviews and Free Taxi Rides. Now, dear reader, it is not easy to convince people to get into our Free Taxi. This is because most perambulating potential passengers are in fact in possession of a fair deal of common sense, which, it seems, makes them reluctant to hop into a strange vehicle with some strangers offering, strangely, a FREE RIDE to wherever they want to go. Perhaps they think we are part of some scary cult, recruiting members for unfortunate human sacrifice. Perhaps they think the camera on the dashboard is there to capture their imminent demise for a leisurely viewing with friends later. We’re not sure what people think, but we are sure that it makes our job a little tricky at times.

We did, however, think that the lack of cardboard in our new CI would give the Taxi a more legitimate feel. Apparently, it doesn’t. Poster paint and the new shade netting addition seem only to make people more reluctant to hop in. Regardless, we shall persevere! The ones who get in are the ones who we want to talk to anyway. Well, that’s what we keep telling ourselves.


Blocked YouTube??? Try this :) 



Friday, December 3, 2010

Sandboarding and the Great Dune of Pain

A guy by the name of Dylan from Sandboarding Cape Town dropped a link on our page a while back. We contacted him and offered a write-up in exchange for an experience. So we trekked out to the dunes in Atlantis for a morning. We couldn’t believe what we found.

So, we don’t know where we’ve been all this time, but it turns out there is a massive Mad Max-like dune system just 20 minutes out of Cape Town. You drive down the West Coast road, stop in a parking lot, go over a small little hill, and there, laid out before you, is another world. How have we not known about this for so long? How do you hide a massive dune system from everyone? Not cool! In all fairness, it is almost completely concealed. Populating the dunes is a whole other subculture. Tribes of tanned and toned local kids with 4X4’s pulling trailers carrying quads and boards and braai’s. They sandboard, quad and drink all day in the blazing sun. It’s like a secret, sandy Utopia.

Dylan took us through the basics of sandboarding. We were doing well until we got bored with the little slopey slope and decided, while Dylan was momentarily distracted, that we hadn’t fallen over yet and were, therefore, way too awesome for baby slopey slopes and obviously ready for the biggest dune in the whole world. A grave miscalculation, we discovered, and although our sandboarding pursuits ended shortly after that, we had a great day regardless.  Check out the video below, and check out Dylan’s link.


For those of you in offices that ban YouTube. Try this :)




Thursday, December 2, 2010

Jan Braai

When we were missioning around with Mike Sharman, getting into scrapes with hairy-sweary guys, he introduced us to a man called Jan Braai. Jan Braai was a CA, until he quite his job to follow a passion – bringing people together through South South Africa’s only truly unique pastime: braaing. He is now behind Braai for Heritage he invented National Braai Day. How awesome?

We caught up with Jan at the Cape Town Beer Festival, where he told us about a new sport he’s invented – the Braai-Athlon. Extremely funny.

For those of you in an office that does not allow YouTube, try this out...




Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Jeff's Taxi Ride





We picked Jeff up on Kloof Street. He was on his way to the other side of town (the old post office near the station) after a job interview. It was a glorious day in the City, and he was cheerfully walking down the road in a full suit, despite the heat. He said he didn’t mind the walk. We gave him a ride. He told us his story – how he was the “so-called first white twin to be born in the False Bay Hospital”, how he’s looking for the love of his life, yet spent his life in love with his City.

A truly positive and friendly guy, check out Jeff’s video below.


For those of you in an office that does not allow YouTube, try this out...



Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Maverick. Legend. Extremely Reliable in an Argument About Parking Spaces. (Part 2, Who knew?)

We ended up close to the V&A Waterfront (not too tricky) – the only place in SA where you can drink on a beach due to the fact that they built the beach themselves. It’s an awesome spot, right on the water and a little tricky to find. More impressive than their ability to create natural environmental features are their cocktails and their extremely round pebbles. We chilled on some white couches on the sand, sipped pink drinks and had a great chat with Mike on blogging, his company, Retro Viral, and why he loves South Africa.


After the beach cocktail, Mike took us to & Union on Bree. The place has it’s own brewery somewhere in the building, and it makes some really awesome brewsky’s. Whatever you do, however, DO NOT attempt to park anywhere near the place. You will be denied access to visibly unoccupied public parking spaces, and then you’ll probably decide to park in a bay marked ‘Cab Films’ because you happen to be driving a cab and you also have a camera with some film in it, and that’s kind of funny until you are ACCOSTED by a giant man in ILL-FITTING PANTS who will SWEAR at you a lot and refuse to let you leave, using his belly as a weapon. Extremely amusing, if you’re into that kind of thing. Unfortunately, we didn’t get it on camera. But rest assured – Mike showed him who’s boss.


Thanks to Mike for a seriously awesome morning. Check out his blog, Sharman and Hobbo, as well as Retro Viral, and, of course, his video below.



Monday, November 29, 2010

Maverick. Legend. Extremely Reliable in an Argument About Parking Spaces.

A friend of ours put us in touch with Mike Sharman, a Jo’burg based blogger and online marketing aficionado who is apparently pretty big in Chad (the place, not the guy.) He was in town for a couple of days, so we offered him a Free Taxi ride. Being a completely legend guy, he accepted.


We picked him up in Woodstock, where a security guard flashed us his big clamp because we, obviously, parked badly. We escaped our brush with ill-wielded Oh-thoree-tay and ended up spending the better part of a morning with Mike, during which we discovered that among his many talents is an aptitude for winning every competition he ever entered. This dude has some rad karma. He recently returned from a stint in the UK, and he told us why he’s glad to be back. Check out Mike’s Taxi ride below.


Friday, November 26, 2010

Roger Ballen Exhibition


You remember where they did the Adidas Three Stories Pop-Up bar during the World Cup? Well, that place (66-68 Albert Road, Woodstock, just follow the rad graffiti) is actually called the Woodstock Industrial Centre, and it’s fast becoming a hub of the art and design scene. It’s where you’ll find /A Word of Art gallery, which is hosting a one-night-only exhibition of celebrated photographer Roger Ballen’s work tonight to mark the opening of his exhibition at the Iziko museum tomorrow. The photographer will we be giving a talk, and we hear there’s going to be champagne, which thereby eradicates any excuse for not being there entirely. Come check it out.

Also opening tonight is Bibliophilia, a new bookshop in the Centre which carries all the books you can never find anywhere else. It’s open daily from 9.30am to 4.00pm for an ultimate paper fix. Check out the vid below.

For more info on Roger Ballen, visit www.rogerballen.com. His stuff is incredible.



Thursday, November 25, 2010

Poster Paint – The Ultimate CI Solution

As you may know, our first attempt at branding of the Free Taxi didn’t work out so well. In fact, our ingenious cardboard signage caused several innocent motorists the inconvenience of near death when it blew off on the highway. Twice. But we’d rather not talk about that. We also rather not talk about the way masking tape sticks to things. Pretty darn well, it turns out. Anyway, we’re prepared to overlook these grave miscalculations if you are. They need never be mentioned again, especially now that we believe we have solved the signage problem forever.

Poster paint. Glorious. It’s cheap. It’s sassy. You can steal it from little children. AND it washes off, sort of. The powdery residue that remains is a small price to pay when you consider it’s general amazingness. Well, that last part is questionable. Tell us what you think.





How to Throw a Kick-Ass Dinner Party in the CBD:

Step 1 – If you don’t have a rad CBD apartment, find someone who does...

A little while back, on the day of the epic Crash Course in Cape Town Taxi Driving, we found that Ethiopian restaurant in town, Addis in Cape, for lunch. While chatting to the restaurant’s owner, Senait, she happened to mention that she was thinking of throwing a dinner party for her housewarming. She’s just moved into the most insane spot in the Piazza on Church Square, and she wanted to celebrate, but she didn’t want to cook.

Well, we thought. Chris can cook like Jammy Olive Ear. Shannon believes she is Tom Cruise in ‘Cocktail’, which means we’ve got food AND drinks covered. We would do the dinner party! What followed was, well, a blast.

 Step 2 – If you can’t cook anything, call Chris.

Due to his prodigious culinary skills, Chris was in charge of the menu. Senait couldn’t remember whether or not she had an oven, so he decided to do things on the Weber. Eventually the menu consisted of:


With Drinks:
- Baked bree and artichoke on baguette.


Starters:
- Rocket, gorgonzola, parma ham and walnut salad with a balsamic reduction. 
- Haloumi on Ciabatta  


Mains:
- Butterflied leg of lamb cooked on a bed of rosemary with braaied lemons
- Kingklip with white wine, lemon zest, spring onions and BUTTER in a poofey foil parcel. 

A wicked chocolate Secret City Project cake from Charly’s as desert.




Step 3 – Don’t get complacent when things look delicious.

Once the several shops were done and we had all the ingredients, we rocked up at Senait’s place on Thursday afternoon and began preparations. Things went smoothly. It only got "random" when the guests arrived and requested grapefruit mojitos and vodka mules in large amounts. These are excellent cocktails to do, because they’re simple, inebriating and delicious.

The Vodka Mule:

Some vodka (how much is directly proportionate to how late dinner’s going to be)
Fresh mint
Ginger beer
Grapefruit juice

The Grapefruit Mojito:

Bacardi rum (see above for amount)
3 lime wedges
Brown sugar
Fresh mint
Crushed ice

Muddle the stuff at the bottom of the glass, add booze, add ice, top up with the juice. Delicious.

Rad as these apartments are, the kitchen tend to be rather small, about the size and volume of a large animal, making cooking rather tricky. Chris is a champ. Check out Chris juggling food below. 



Step 4 – If you make pancakes for a living, and you once owned a discoteque, you are awesome.

Among the guests at Senait’s dinner party was an extremely interesting man call Jean-Luc. He is from France, and he accidently landed in Cape Town one day. He has never left. Jean-Luc once owned a number of discos. He sold them all and retired. Bored, he decided to buy a trailer and sell pancakes on the Camps Bay strip. Just for fun. Now he’s a feature. He promised us as many free pancakes as we want, so we’re definitely going to make a turn soon.

Check out the final dinner party video below.



Thanks to Senait for letting us commandeer her kitchen, and to Charly’s Bakery for making us an amazing Secret City Project cake. It was incredible.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Speed shopping


When it comes to shopping Chris believes that there is only one way to execute it. Fast. He took Senait and Shannon on an adrenalin driven shopping spree, designed to make sure Senait did not realise how much cash she was dropping and that we could make our afternoon meeting. Check out speed shopping below.



Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Senait's Taxi Ride

You remember Addis in Cape? We gave the owner, Senait, a free ride to do some shopping for her dinner party (more on that later). Senait is an incredible woman. A business woman to her core, she owns three restaurants – one in Tanzania, the other in Ethiopia and the third here in Cape Town. After living all over the world, she’s made Cape Town her home. She loves this city. See the vid below.





Monday, November 22, 2010

Blyda Saves Us

Due to Shannon’s unfortunate yet incurable lack of interest in anything business related and Chris’ unavoidable lack of time to do things necessary for his survival such as sleeping, absorbing nutrients and following the basics of personal hygiene (just kidding, Chris - you smell fine) we’ve recruited a friend to help us put together the required bleh-businessy things we need so we can afford to eat occasionally. Her name is Blyda, and she’s a kick-ass marketer. To give her some idea of what we’re about, we picked her and Simon up in Gardens and took her for a Free Taxi ride. Check out the video below.


Friday, November 19, 2010

Kareema's taxi ride

One of our first Free Taxi passengers was a lady called Kareema. We picked her up on Orange, even though she was only going to the Mount Nelson, and because she was early that day, she let us drive her around for a while and listen to her story.

What struck us first was her energy. She comes from Delft. She is a single mother of two children. She works hard as a cleaner at a five star hotel, where she is instructed to be invisible. Yet she is vivacious, optimistic and happy. She loves her city. She told us that Delft (a fairly rough area) doesn’t sit on her clothes. It’s not the place that makes the people, she says, but the people who make the place. A while back her idol Lionel Richie was in town. She’s pretty much his biggest fan, yet she couldn’t go up to him and say hi, for fear of being fired. We know this is the way things are. Why?

A truly beautiful and gutsy individual – check out Kareema’s video below.



Thursday, November 18, 2010

Michelle Son's exhibition - To Whom It May Concern

There’s a place called the Field Office down on Barrack Str. (between Harrington and Roeland.) It’s a great coffee shop/ working space put together by two designers as a place for creatives to meet, work and get off their faces on caffeine. You will sit on rad buckets which have been made into incredible stools, drink great coffee and be surrounded by Macbooks and interesting ideas. It’s here that Michelle Son has displayed her latest work, an interactive installation calledTo Whom It May Concern.’


While the installation was being set up in the background, all Microsoft colours and moving parts, we had a chance to ask Michelle what it’s all about. Check out the video below, then make your way down to the Field Office to experience it first hand. It’s awesome.



The Granny Cam is Gammy, Man

So, if you remember, we took some shots at Paul’s Secret Spot with Chris’ pristinely preserved Granny Cam, as Zenith something or other, with takes the type of film you find on a dusty shelf at the back of Orms and costs an arm and a wrinkly leg to develop. We weren’t sure how they’d come out, but we picked them up yesterday and they are really cool. Well, 50% of them.

There seems to be a problem with the Granny Cam. There is an ominous black shape covering half of every photograph. Perhaps the Granny Cam is possessed. Maybe it was the antiquated film. Either way, if you look past the smudgy thing on the left side of every image, you’ll see how awesome the Granny Cam will be when we get it exorcised. But we’ve uploaded the pics anyway, for your viewing pleasure.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Calvin's Supper Club

When you hear the term Supper Club you envision a bunch of grannies sitting around a very well lit dinner table. Flying geese decorating the walls and the pong of bustle sprouts. Not this one. Calvin and his mates meet up once a week and prepare a three-course meal for each other. We were kindly invited to join in, warned that the bouncer will kick us out if you didn’t have to R40 required to pay for the meal, we entered into this unknown realm of supper clubs.

Seeing as these dudes spend their free time beating each other up at Mixed Martial Arts and playing extreme frisbee you’d expect that they would have no finesse around the kitchen. We were seriously wrong! We were served up a delicious butternut soup, which sent Chris spiraling into depression seeing as he was certain his was unbeatable. Followed by a “my plate isn’t big enough” fish curry. All topped off with a cheese platter and peanut brittle.

Dinner conversation was as good as the food. We discussed music, parachuting dogs, Harvest of Hope, Rosetta Roastery, tightrope walking, and Troy’s 300 rendition. Unfortunately the video camera drank too much wine and decided not to record a lot of the evening. So did we. Nevertheless check out Calvin’s Supper club video below.


Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Fish on The Rocks - Hout Bay - "The Best Place in Africa"

After our mission to Paul's Secret Spot, we were, understandably, very hungry. Nothing works up an appetite more than taking pictures of people's eyeballs. So we went a little further down the road (a clue?) to Hout Bay, all the way round the harbor to the very furtherest place where you'll find the BEST fish and chips at Fish on the Rocks.

You can't miss the place. It's positively psychedelic. They've registered the domain name 'www.africasfavourite.com' which we thought was very funny, but awesome, because if Africa the Continent really dug fish and chips, this probably would be her favorite, and they'd probably have enough hake on the premises to feed her, too. 

The people who work there are extremely nice, the service is great, the vibe is great. The food is  full of nutritious, delicious, tasty greasy goodness. Crack an ice-cold Coke, squirt some All Gold and enjoy. If you really like seagulls, you should definitely go here. R40 gets you a great big portion of fish and chips, which you won't finish, but you can take it down to the rocks and throw it to the birds. If you are really afraid of birds, you should definitely not go here or do this, ever.

And, when you're done with lunch, go a little further through Hout Bay and pay R30 to do Chapman's Peak drive. The views are truly world-class. There's also the thrill of danger you get from the possibility of getting squashed by a falling rock at any second, which makes you appreciate the views even more and think of the mentally unstable people who like to cycle up there. If you don't want to pay R30, the first 2.5km's are free, you just need to turn around halfway and come back, missing the most spectacular theatrical views and seeing the same thing twice.

Check out our lunch video below.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Shooting with Paul at his secret spot.

So, as you may remember, our photographer friend Paul promised to take us shooting at his favourite Cape Town secret spot.  Bright and early Saturday morning we met him in the parking lot of X, caffeinated and ready to go. It really was a gorgeous day.

The point of the exercise was two-fold. Shannon needed to learn how to use Chris' digital camera, so she spent most of the day taking photos of a bottle cap and her watch to try and understand how things are sometimes dark and sometimes light and sometimes blurry and other times not so blurry. Chris wanted to check out the ancient Zenith camera he inherited from his gran (the Grannny Cam) and pick up a few tips from Paul as to how to take photos which melt your face, something Paul happens to be very good at. We spent a good six hours romping on the rocks with our photographer friends Tegan, Matt and Fran, and meeting some cool impromptu portrait models - the most memorable and awesome being Rafeeqa, who had a really cool smurf T-Shirt and patiently sat for us for hours, smiling beatifically. We really enjoyed her. Thanks Rafeeqa!

Because we promised Paul we wouldn't tell anyone where his best kept secret spot was, we can't tell you where Paul's best kept secret spot is. But if you guess, and we, like, don't say your wrong and stuff, then that's not really telling, is it? So log onto the FB page and gives us your best guess, and if we don't say your wrong, then your right and you can win something awesome, which we can't tell you about either. Paul says that, if you follow what he calls 'the chicken bone trail,' you'll find his spot and most of the other best spots in CT. We did, so should you. See where it leads you.

So we're extremely excited to see how the Zenith shots came out. They're being developed today, so we'll post them later. They may be all white and over-exposed, but they better not be because they cost like R20 a shot. Overall, we had an awesome day. Check out the vid below.


Friday, November 12, 2010

Paul Brehem's (SA Photographer) Taxi Drive

We met Paul after he commented on a post about us somewhere in the cyberscape. We offered him a Free Taxi ride, and weren’t sure quite what to expect when we picked him up from the Greenpoint Vida. 


Turns out, Paul is an absolute legend. He is also a pretty famous photographer. His work is incredible. Check it out here. We took him to YoursTruly and had an awesome lunch chatting about, well, everything from aliens to the medium format film in Chris’ granny’s camera.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours. Check out Paul’s taxi ride below. 




Thursday, November 11, 2010

YoursTruly Deli - 175 Long

Chris has a friend called Danny, who has just opened a cool new deli on Long called YoursTruly. We were keen to check it out, so we headed there for lunch on Tuesday.

We all know that opening a coffee shop is a risky affair. You have to have guts to put all your free-range eggs in such a basket. But the story of YoursTruly is as much a romance as it is a business endeavour. Danny, a graphic designer by trade, is a charismatic guy who had an idea. That idea became an obsession. He quit his job. He scoured the city for a location. He couldn’t find one. Back then you could find him skateboarding up and down Long Street for hours trying to find the perfect place. Eventually, he did – a grimy coffee shop below Neighbourhood. He managed to track down the landlord, but, due to the unfortunate previous tenants, the landlord was convinced that a coffee shop makes premises grimy. Danny sent through his proposal anyway, and asked the landlord to consider him if he were ever to change his mind. Which is exactly what happened when he read Danny’s proposal, and that’s how YoursTruly came to reside at 175 Long, just below Neighbourhood.

Apart from the great location, there are a whole lot of other things just right about the place. Experienced baristas and a great house roast mean the coffee is awesome. They do incredible fresh, wholesome sandwiches which you design yourself and which cost, unbelievably, around R24.00. They also serve pastries and fresh juices. The walls are covered in art for sale, and there’s a great lounge area at the back where you can pick up a magazine and not be disturbed. If you’re in a hurry, you can grab a takeaway from the NY style window that opens onto the street.

Overall, you’re getting that hip inner-city vibe without the overboard prices. We’re sure you’ll find yourself a regular before you know it. Check out our video of the opening below.


Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Addis in Cape - Ethiopian Restaurant

There’s a place on Church street called Addis in Cape. It is, quite literally, a chunk of Ethiopia slap bang in the middle of the CBD, and after our Crash Course in Real Taxi Driving, we rocked up there for lunch.


The place is awesome. The restaurant takes up three stories, with a roving smoking section and beautiful décor throughout. Intricate silver Ethiopian crosses, bright umbrellas hung from the ceiling and ancient papyrus books fill the space. The low carved chairs are surprisingly comfortable, and the service is, quite simply, amazing.


So is the food. Ethiopian cuisine consists of a vast selection of beautifully spiced curries. Each dish comes either spicy or not so spicy, and all of it is served in mounds on a gigantic sourdough pancake plate and eaten communally with baskets of rolled Injera (the same thing the plate is made of) that look like bandages and serve as both knife and fork. It is, quite simply, delicious.


Addis in Cape imports its spices directly form Ethiopia, and each dish is prepared separately, from scratch, to order- no mean feat when each table orders about seven different dishes a meal.  Though you may be desperately confused by the menu, ordering is really pretty simple. Just ask for chicken, lamb, mushrooms, butternut and so on, and tell the waiter whether you want it spicy or not. They’ll do the rest. When you’re done, you can eat your plate. Just make sure you finish with their insane Ethiopian coffee.


For more info, go to www.addisincape.co.za, and check our video below.