Charlene Smith
The working class know how to breakfast – no queuing at fashionable restaurants with two hours’ worth of make-up layered on your face, eternally swivelling eyes to check out who’s with who and 60 bucks for muesli and a delicate fan of strawberry.
The working class have breakfast when the blood still hasn’t dried on their shaving nicks, when birds are still staggering into trees to cough out their morning squawk and the sun is using industrial haze to create a magnificent entry into the universe. The working-class breakfaster knows only that cellulite, cholesterol and cavities are words that begin with C, a little like coffee, cigarettes and cash and, therefore, probably essential.
Perhaps the best place for working-class breakfasts is at the Colombian coffee house at the Woodmead Value Mart in Sandton. It is at a place where highways intersect and bargain basement retailers clog the verges. The Colombian is a 24-hour venue, but is most interesting between 6am and 8am when shop assistants, computer technicians, mechanics and the odd travelling salesperson perch on stools that flank windows on to a parking lot.
On one recent day just before Christmas, at around 6.30am, Johan, a burly computer technician with a beard, sat visibly trembling next to me while I dripped honey on to the best French toast in town. At the Colombian you can have a good breakfast with excellent coffee for under R15. He had finished his two eggs, bacon, sausage and toast with jam, and was now trying to keep his hands from shaking coffee on to his large fingers.
We were discussing a mutual fear of flying. It has to be said that Johan, at over 2m tall and probably just over 100kg, had the worst case of nerves about flying I have ever encountered.
We were perched on stools gazing across the parking lot and a sweat had broken out on Johan’s brow as he was discussing the dream vacation he had booked and paid for, for him and his girlfriend to go to Bali, Hong Kong and Singapore in March. “I’ve paid everything, last time I only put a deposit down to go to London and when we got to the airport I wouldn’t get on to the plane.” Better than that, he passed out as they approached the ticket counter.
My advice was take a short trip first, take tranquillisers and a sleeping pill for the flight, breathe deeply, start meditation classes.
And all around us the Colombian was going through its morning routine – regulars get greeted with a jovial “howzit”, newspapers get shared and spread across counters with ads at discount stores getting read before the sports sections, the women’s pages and sometimes the front pages. No one reads the business pages.
It’s a great place for the insomniac or someone who wants a hearty breakfast with great coffee en route to Johannesburg, Midrand or Pretoria.
On the Ben Schoeman highway is BJ’s, a restaurant spanning the highway frequented by traffic cops, the Gauteng Highway Patrol, their quarry and travellers. Here you can get standard mass-produced fare fast in a clean environment, but with no people contact in the classic style of the fast-food eatery where food and people are rendered anonymous and boring.
Deep in the heart of Johannesburg are three working-class eateries. One of the most fascinating is the Belem on the corner of Delvers and Kerk streets. A Portuguese establishment, it tells the story of Portuguese colonialism in Africa – in the early 1980s there were lots of mercenary- looking types who would huddle in corners with guys in grey shoes (dead giveaway for the South African security branch) and glare malevolently at anyone who did not look like a hired gun.
By the late 1980s the mercenary types had begun to dwindle and the security branch honchos increased. Now everyone looks like a smuggler, all races, more nationalities. It has fabulous caf latte – not these miserable frothy nothings you get in Melville, but real hot milk and strong, hot coffee – and superb pregos, eggs with peri peri, and custard pies which a well-known business editor is addicted to.
Meals at Belem can easily be had for under R15, with coffee. Across the road from the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court is Bassetts, which treats cops, clients, lawyers and others to breakfast and breakneck lunches served by pimply-faced youths. Bassetts is owned by a former head of security police in Johannesburg who just before the democratic elections in 1994 took a package from the police and went into the restaurant business.
He sits in a small office at the back surrounded by plastic softdrink cartons, girly calendars and furniture store landscapes.
The restaurant is divided into three by some unwritten code: at the back on stools around high tables sit cops and informers and heavy drinkers; in the inner restaurant with two layers of pretty tablecloths on each table sit advocates and attorneys and famous clients; in the front entrance waiters recline for brief respites when court is in session on seats in a window alcove while the poorer, more desperate attorneys and clients sit with pen files, full ashtrays and plates of chips smeared in tomato sauce, anxiety furrowing their brows.
A meal at Bassetts with coffee or Coca- Cola (cops live on Coke even at 7.30am) will set you back between R20 and R25.
But for a real slice of breakfast or lunch, or even just coffee on the wild side (for your stomach), try eating at the restaurant in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court, set on the first floor halfway between the maintenance courts and the anti-hijacking unit (there is a difference, I’m told).
You file into three rows of steel queue controllers. The largest meatballs in town, popularly known as bulls’ testicles by regulars and a delicacy I decline to consider, sit slathered in gravy in steel trays, next to two huge urns, stacks of polystyrene cups and huge containers of Ricoffy.
Pink fabric roses adorn heart-shaped baskets in the eating area trying to give some form to what has to be one of the tackiest eateries in town after the Faraday restaurant in Sauer Street, where stywe pap, krummelpap, vleis, boiled offal and sausages are the fare of the day for breakfast, lunch and anytime – under R10. The Faraday and magistrate’s court restaurants vie for the surliest staff in town.
For those with strong constitutions you can also eat for under R10 or R15 at the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court restaurant – the main fare is toasted sandwiches, prepacked cheese-and-tomato sandwiches and bananas. I stick to bananas and Ricoffy.
But there are two lessons one needs to bear in mind at the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court: take your own tissues and soap if you wish to use the public toilets, and your own teaspoon – unless you don’t mind stirring with a plastic fork at the restaurant.
All in all, much more fun than the plastic people at Stephanies.
January
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