COFFEE WITH CLASS
KAHVE Road coffee shop and bistro in Claremont, Cape Town, aims to be an experience of flavourful food and coffee with a difference. From the moment you step over the threshold, you are immersed in the soft lighting and gold embellishments that are part of the eating experience.
Their wide selection of food, coffees, teas and pâtisserie makes this venue the ideal spot for almost any meeting or gathering.
The menu and most of the accents in the restaurant have wooden touches with their logo tastefully crafted into them. The menu appears to be finely tuned so that you get just the basics of the ingredients, but still a teaser of what will come out of the kitchen.
Kahve Road does all-day breakfasts – which includes croissants, waffles and poached eggs on toast. Their café classics include artisan pies, butter chicken curry and a trio of sliders. They also offer a range of open sandwiches, salads and a cheese board.
Flip the menu around and you will be surprised by their wide selection of teas and coffees ranging from loose leaf tea – a selection of black, green and herbal teas from different origins – and cold beverages.
The loose-leaf teas are served in a basket in a teapot and infused for a recommended time as indicated on mini hourglasses.
Guests control how strong (or weak) they want their tea.
Waiter Haydn Hemming explained: “We serve the leaves in a basket. We have a timer. Each specific tea has a recommended time for which it should be infused. After three to five minutes you can take the basket out of the teapot, and if you leave it in it’s just going to get stronger.
“All origin.”
Of course the coffee also comes with a difference – the milk is steamed to 63ºC to allow the natural sweetness to bring out the flavour in the milk and exaggerate the coffee bean taste.
Hemming explains: “(The coffee) tends to be just a little cooler than one would expect, but because coffee was a luxury back in the day, of our teas are single that’s how it was supposed to be consumed, rather quickly and not sipped on for a long time. We do things a little bit different around here.”
My colleague had the Malawi black tea described on the menu as robust, sweet, woody and earthy. Beautiful golden red liquor colour that blends beautifully with a little milk (R28).
I wanted to try something different, and since turmeric is the wonder spice of the season, I had a turmeric thyme latte – made with coconut cream, mixed with turmeric thyme and combined with perfectly textured milk (R27).
I was worried that the turmeric would be a little overwhelming because of the smell and the colour, but it really wasn’t.
Instead it was a perfectly creamy blend with a hint of turmeric that was anything but overpowering.
The teas and coffees at Khave Road are served without sugar to bring out their flavours, but no sugar is needed.
We also sampled the flat white coffee (R25), cappuccino (R27) and the red rooibos flat white (R27).
To eat, my colleague had the Pain Perdu, from the all-day breakfast options, a croissant bread pudding dish with caramelised banana, served with crème anglaise, butterscotch sauce and chantilly cream (R79).
I had the gourmet trio of sliders from the café classics options, which include a coriander lamb with BBQ sauce, crumbed chicken with mayo and grilled spiced pineapple and harissa falafel with hummus, pickled cucumber and tzatziki (R95) with a side order of rosemary thyme sweet potato and potato (R26).
Kahve Road is a great place if you’re looking to enjoy quick, light meals, and if it’s just coffee or tea you’re after, this restaurant is definitely worth the stop.