The Familiar Bread

My mom and I had lunch at The Olympia Cafe in Kalk Bay, a rowdy place on the Main Road with a good view of the harbour, populated by local women with telltale, creased blue eyes, tanned skin and a slightly vague air, chilled-out tourists who've heard the word, and lone newspaper-reading men with a similar, preoccupied but serene look. The service is slapdash and tardy but goodnatured, the food is for people with gargantuan appetites; they have wine too - my mom was anxious about this: red wine and white wine. We ordered white wine and it turned out to be a totally drinkable Bovlei Sauvignon blanc. The bread, when it arrived, looked familiar. It's a very nice ciabatta, squooshier than it should be but a little resistant near the crust, with holes and not caverns inside, and we'd just seen it at a little shop on the Main Road understocked with an assortment of jams, olives, etc. You get good olive oil to dip it into.

The cooks at The Olympia Cafe believe you should eat salad (so do I, but...). When my mom asked for her fishcakes without the usual mash, she got a side salad. Just in case she didn't have enough already.