Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Go overboard at The Larder
Creativejuice
MY ADVICE when visiting The Larder is to go hungry. Otherwise you’re going to have a difficult time choosing between a breakfast served all day, lunch, and the gorgeous array of pastries. Why should a person have to have only one? Or only two?
Although The Larder in Diep River has been there for quite a while – and a new branch opened in Claremont in November – I first became acquainted with Sonja Edridge’s delicious food when she ran the kitchen at Truth HQ in Buitenkant Street.
There I had the Johnny Depp for breakfast (sourdough bread, bacon, soft poached eggs and hollandaise sauce), cinnamon buns with my coffee, and a variety of lunches. One day Sonja called me into the kitchen to try the new bacon jam. Amazing.
You can buy it (it should be back in stock by this week) as well as other sweet jams, chutneys, and relishes from The Larder, which you will find tucked away inside the Block & Chisel interior design store. After walking through the displays of expensive new furni- ture made to look old, The Larder is decorated with genuine vintage items, although it’s furnished with chairs and tables from Block & Chisel, which are for sale.
Each table has books or magazines (ours had a sewing machine as well, and a dumpy milk bottle filled with sugar), there are classic LP records on the shelves, and there is a basket of knitting needles and wool in a corner. The invitation is to “knit a row and go”, with the aim of completing scarves to be donated to children in winter.
The open-plan kitchen is surrounded by a counter topped with interesting foodie goodies and flyers for theatre shows, and in front of that is a long table filled with cakes, pastries, biscuits and buns to make you drool. It’s beautifully cluttered with temptations.
Breakfast can be simple, like toast with butter (churned by virgins, according to the menu) or toppings like Larder jam, Nutella, peanut butter, or avo, rocket and lemon. There’s yoghurt with “bunga bunga” – a nutty, seedy mixture – and jam, scrambled or poached eggs with bacon or smoked salmon trout, and mushrooms on toast. Extras like more virgin butter, roasted tomatoes, more bacon, and honey mustard chicken sausages can be added at will.
Ingredients are organic, seasonal, and free range as applicable. For lunch you can have quiche or frittata (for the Banting/gluten people), soup, a wrap or a sausage roll, salads, sandwiches or pizza. Again, extras can be added according to taste.
Mom had a generously filled gammon, Brie and pickle sandwich (R55); other options are chicken mayo with pesto and rocket, Brie with hummus and rocket, and avo and rocket. Rocket is clearly an economical and popular ingredient – there was loads of it on top of my rustic “meaty” pizza (R85) which had strips of crispy bacon (chorizo is the other choice), chunks of creamy mozzarella, and sweet tomato sauce spread over the paperthinnest base I’ve ever had.
Then there is dessert – plum cheesecake, carrot cake, shortbread biscuits, the famous cinnamon buns, chocolate brownies, crunchies, pasteis de nata, wheatfree orange cake, divinely tart lemon meringue slices, and wicked little squares of chocolate-topped caramel on a biscuit base.
We didn’t have one of everything but those lemon slices are the best. No wait, the caramel squares… okay maybe the lemon. You’re just going to have to find out for yourself.
The Larder is not licensed. There are coffees, teas, and fruit juices to drink. They also make refreshing beverages of freshly squeezed lime, or lemon cordial, topped with sparkling water, ice and mint.
Our bill came to R231 without a tip, which goes into a communal jar.
Although there’s not much to see from the Main Road (the entrance is around the corner), and since it’s inside another shop there’s not a whole lot of foot traffic, The Larder is obviously well- known; every table was full during lunch time on a Monday.