Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Enjoy breakfast with a difference
Cafe: Clay Cafe Address: Erf 2224, Main Road, Hout Bay, Cape Town Contact: 021 790 3318 Hours: 9am to 5pm, daily Selection: Holiday Special 2 Price: R105
WENDYL MARTIN
I SHOULD have known. The address started with “erf”. You know that will mean the place is in the bundu.
After a steep off-road drive in a sedan that wasn’t made for it, Clay Cafe unfolded before my colleague and I.
Clay Cafe might have been the calmest place on earth but my task-driven ways still had me in a nervous state.
Who’s watching how I paint? How do I write about this? Am I going to accidently ingest paint?
I’ll give them points for serenity. It turns out painting pottery is a very therapeutic activity.
It seemed a little complicated at first. I wasn’t sure who to ask for service or how their system worked.
The holiday special gets you a mediumsized item and a small item or one big item and a cappuccino or a juicebox and a snack.
Fantasising about a cold winter in a few months, I chose a large soup cup that I think I may end up using for wine or gluhwein.
I opted for the juice and snack option, not feeling like any caffeine.
They offered me a choice of a brownie, a crunchie and fudge. The fudge was sweet.
There’s much to choose from: ashtrays, ceramic stars, salad bowls and more. It’s a great gift idea, if you can paint that is.
After picking my colour palette of red, blue, black and white I proceeded to the balcony.
It has an amazing view of a quiet side of Hout Bay. It provided an inspiring background of the Twelve Apostles. Gentle folk music played in the background. Couples worked on painting projects together: it was all very hippy.
I bumped into a mate whose niece was intricately working on a fairy, not a splodge of paint out of place.
As for my wine mug, my colours dripped everywhere. I made a strange grey muck out of the white and black smudging each other.
In a fit of creativity, I painted red circles at the top of the cup and dotted them with black at the centres.
“Why are you painting boobs on your cup?” asked my friend. I didn’t see it that way. “I had to do something with the black.” In a few weeks it will be ready for me to pick up.
It’s going into a furnace for glazing and will come out all glossy and shiny.
Perhaps that will fix a few of my mispaints. Or I will just call it art.
Clay Cafe offers a full menu of food, from scrambled egg croissants for breakfast to pizzas for lunch. wendyl.martin@inl.co.za Twitter:@WendylMartin