FORECOURT FANTASIES

Luxury garage shops, offering everything from hotdogs with yuzu mayonnaise to ceramics, are a surprising trend. And Joburg’s The Pantry fits right into the zeitgeist

In 1927, the first traffic light was installed in Joburg on the corner of Rissik and President (now Helen Joseph) streets. It was a heady moment. Residents gathered in droves to marvel at this green, amber and red revelation.

Joburgers are enthusiastic like that. Even, and especially, about the, erm, pedestrian.

Fast-forward almost 100 years, and nothing has changed. This time we’re in a fluster about a petrol station store.

Of course, this isn’t your usual pie and Coke pit stop.

The Pantry, which is the Marble Group’s newest child, might not be a sit-down spot like its siblings, Marble, Saint and Zioux, but it’s every bit as high-end and almost instantly as popular.

Last Saturday morning, I dropped by this souped-up new 24-hour garage shop (where the Caltex used to be on Jan Smuts Avenue, below

Marble). Nothing could have prepared me for the experience.

The forecourt was a jigsaw of luxury vehicles jammed between petrol pumps and electric charging stations. Except neither are operational yet, so the cars’ owners were only parked to visit the store.

Inside, a sea of humans swelled between isles of imported Easter chocolates, fresh veggies, a pizza oven and deli counter. It was hard to take in the designer space — there were just so many people ogling the goods. This was Harrods Food Hall-lite as far as food shopping mania goes.

I took a gap and was able to get close to the ready meals. I didn’t grab a poke bowl because I got distracted by the thought of a big container of burrata.

I’d also missed the piles of freshly baked focaccia. They’re the kind you get at Marble — heavenly — and are part of the 200 breads from the restaurant that The Pantry sells daily.

Eventually, overwhelmed, and in what I now recognise as a hangry flash, I left, vowing to return when all of the northern suburbs weren’t vying hysterically for a berry Basque cheesecake.

In the flurry of fancy food, fine wine and homeware (yes, it even sells ceramics and the like), I spotted Marble Group founder Gary Kyriacou. He was scrambling to the front door with a pile of shopping baskets.

It seemed a far cry from a person who could, on another day, be seen genteelly checking on a patron at Saint, but as he said later of the new venture: “It’s taken us all by surprise and shown us what our customers are looking for — it’s the personal touch. We’re bringing hospitality back into retail.”

His slogging on a Saturday morning was a reminder of what an addition his business has been to our city. The hard graft of Kyriacou and his partners Dino Constantinou and chef David Higgs has given us glitzy restaurants to do deals at, and created about 400 jobs. We need more of this kind of hustle.

In the same week that The Pantry opened, an article in Air Mail (the digital mailer by former Vanity Fair editor

Graydon Carter) detailed a larney petrol station that’s opened in Paris.

As writer Alexander Lobrano explained, the Gazoline Stand does petrol, hotdogs with yuzu mayonnaise and an array of deeply trendy merchandise including hoodies and

Japanese Kit Kats. It’s the brainchild of Parisian DJ and creative Ramdane Touhami, and perhaps indicates that pumped-up “gas stations” might be part of the new zeitgeist.

The Pantry’s instantaneous following also speaks to a notion that’s more parochial: Joburgers have learnt to get excited about a surprising array of things.

Sure, we don’t have a sea or river or even functioning museums (the less said about Johannesburg Art Gallery and Museum Africa, the better —

unless you’re mayor Mpho Phalatse, then do something), so the small stuff, like a convenience store, can spark an uncommon outpouring of enthusiasm.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the phrase “Have you been to The Pantry yet?” is the

question at gatherings around town. ‘

As frantic as my first experience was, my sister and I feel compelled to go back soon, order a cortado, sit at one of the tables under the undulating garage roof, and watch the boets in their iXs come and go.

It takes our inbuilt Joburg love of restaurants set in car parks to another level.