Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [105]
The Explorer bus trip drops us ultimately at the downtown tourism office, a good place to ask for directions to our choice for dinner, a restaurant known for good South African fare. Bill picks up a free city map and takes it up to the information desk to ask, “Are we in walking distance of Biesmiellah, the restaurant in the Bo-Kapp neighborhood?”
The woman looks back and forth at our white faces, the same shade as hers, and says, “Yes, theoretically at least. I don’t know the exact location on the map, but I can show you the vicinity and street. Be aware you should not walk in Bo-Kapp, or downtown either, after dark, and you should not venture very far into Bo-Kapp even during the day. Also, you can’t count on taxi transportation, especially coming back from the area. Cape Town has one of the lowest number of cabs per capita of any city in the world, something we’re trying to correct. If you still want to go, do it early, planning to eat and leave by sunset.”
Our walk to the restaurant takes us through the heart of the downtown shopping quarter, where we browse in African craft galleries, admiring in particular fanciful objects made out of scavenged materials such as telephone wire. The route continues into the thick of the vendor stalls on Greenmarket Square and across a busy boulevard onto Upper Wale Street, the location of Biesmiellah. The address at number 2 leads us to hope that the place might be near the intersection, but it’s obvious within a block that it must be at the other end of the virtually deserted lane, which curves out of sight ahead before any sign of our destination. “I suspect it’s safe to keep going, but we don’t really know about that or how far the place is,” Bill says.
Not usually one to emphasize caution, Cheryl balks as well. “The situation makes me nervous. I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”
With the sun beginning to approach the horizon, we walk back to our hotel, the Protea Victoria Junction, a pleasantly standard business establishment with pretensions to being a local movie-industry mecca. Several restaurants nearby seem worth a look, but none of them entices us to a table, leaving us eventually to eat in the hotel dining room. Both of us get fresh fish, and Bill orders a bottle of good South African wine to share. When the waitress asks us about dessert, each of us responds, “Nothing, thank you.” She returns several minutes later with cake plates bearing a handwritten note in chocolate saying “nothing,” making us smile all the way up to our room.
After a late breakfast the next morning, we walk a short mile to the harbor, the departure point for four-hour tours to Robben Island, site of the notorious Apartheid prison where Nelson Mandela, among many others, lived for years. “Let’s book the last boat in the afternoon,” Cheryl says, “to watch the sunset over the water on our return. In the meantime we can wander through the waterfront mall development and have a combination lunch-dinner right before we take off.” Bill agrees, buys the tickets, and we go in search of African crafts again, eventually buying a copper-wire-and-bead bracelet for Cheryl and some handmade Christmas-tree ornaments for ourselves and family members.
For our major meal of the day, we opt for the only harbor-side restaurant specializing in South African food, the Ikhaya. The waitress brings us a menu full of fascinating choices, and takes our order for a beer and a ginger beer, the latter a malty, yeasty version with strong ginger flavor. For appetizers, Cheryl settles on braised snoek, a favorite fish of the region, and Bill goes for spinach balls with a spicy chakalaka sauce. The kitchen flakes the snoek, simmers it with