Salvation, sunny side up

The writer supports Nosh Food Rescue, an NGO that helps Jozi feeding schemes with food ‘rescued’ from the food chain. Please support them here. 

During the time of Covid we know only too well how restaurants have suffered. They and their staff have had some of the roughest time almost all the way through it. 

Early predictions were that the fine dining places might survive what we imagined to be the length of the pandemic, since top-end diners were not lacking expendable income and would presumably continue to eat out almost as usual. The middle rung of restaurants were considered the likeliest not to survive because their clientele would be hit hardest in the wallet. The bacon and egg places and coffee joints, well, they would not be that affected because people would still pop in for coffees and comforting toast and stuff, nothing wildly expensive anyway? 

The owners of cafés and breakfast places have had less to fear from the liquor prohibitions, if they are even licensed, and the curfews. They were not going to be much more dependent on the masked folk than they’d been on the unmasked before them, anyway. Some even added takeaway or delivery services. 

Of course, everyone was affected. As predicted, the middle end suffered most and closed fastest, even during the earliest lockdown.

Then the top end started to buckle just when it seemed those places might make it and win through. The tasting menu places began feeling pinches that their patrons, wealthy as they may have seemed, were finally feeling. It’s been over a year since the start and that’s what is so sad. They held out for so long.

The casual or less expensive end, the breakfast places, the coffee joints are doing the best of all, which is not to say they’re necessarily doing well. They’re just more able to cope with the lockdowns since many do takeaways anyway and liquor prohibition means little to them. Many do not even rely on sit-down eaters to any large extent. It has helped. Most of the valued ones are still with us. Luckily for us, they are survivors.

On a very bad and sad protest day for parts of Gauteng, when even the air seemed fragile, I started revisiting some stalwarts, the better of my old coffee and breakfast constants, the ones that have maintained high, even impeccable food standards no matter what. 

They were not in affected looting and burning areas because they are not the types of places in big centres with big parking lots. They tend to be tucked into small surroundings.

The Salvation Cafe at 44 Stanley is thankfully still here. After 15 or 16 years at 44 Stanley, chef Claudia Gianoccaro is still turning out those 10-out-of-10 Eggs Benedicts and their cousins. The poached eggs that once wowed eaters, because they were so used in those days to being served steamed eggs from “poaching pans”, taste as good as ever. The quality of everything has always been and is excellent, like the wonderful bacon, the Hollandaise made with real egg-tasting eggs and lemon juice just before it goes over the poached beauties on their English muffins. 

Claudia shrugs when we talk about her place’s survival. Today it is empty but for me and a friend outdoors and another person indoors. She gesticulates at the empty benches and tables. The well-trained staff that is certainly not cheap labour are here every day no matter how many eaters do or don’t rock up. 

“The electricity and gas run just the same. So, besides less people on tricky days and Uber Eats taking a large chunk of commission, it does mean we’re less profitable than before.”

It’s the very first time in 16 years of Salvation breakfasts that I don’t eat Eggs Benedict. It’s also the only place where I always very much want to do so. The friend, who’s heard a lot about them, does exactly that and the waiter suggests I have shakshuka. I’m a little tired of this dish, now becoming ubiquitous, but this one is different. It’s more like a sort of ratatouille of red vegetables in which lie the brilliantly poached eggs. The other thing is that fresh sesame has been cooked with the vegetables and it makes the sauce quite creamy and extra delicious. I say fresh sesame with meaning, because older sesame never does that and is slightly bitter rather than nuttily sweet.

Shakshuka: It’s more like a sort of ratatouille of red vegetables in which lie the brilliantly poached eggs. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

The Service Station is known for the fab cakes that go with equally fab coffee. (Photo: Supplied)

There are lots of variations of French toast, made with brioche, sourdough or ciabatta and various cheffy items. (Photo: Supplied)

Dave says his coffee is a very expensive item ‘but it’s crucial’. (Photo: Supplied)

A Persian style dish of Eggs Mirza, an avo and chilli sauce toast above it. (Photo: Supplied)