Cafés in City Centre & Bo-Kaap

Bree Street, from Hard Pressed to Pang

Rosetta Roastery's café sits on the corner of Bree and Shortmarket streets and opens 08:00–16:00 Monday to Saturday and 08:00–14:00 on Sunday. The Ladder at 136 Bree Street starts earlier, at 07:00 on weekdays, and Café Frank at 160 Bree opens 07:30–17:00 on weekdays and 08:30–14:00 on Saturday. Pang Specialty Coffee is further up, at 173 Bree Street.

The low numbers form a cluster of their own: Hard Pressed Café at 4 Bree Street, Folk Cafe in Touchstone House at number 8 and Cookie Co. at 16, which opens at 07:00 on weekdays and 09:00–13:00 on Sunday. Mulino is at 22 Bree and GOGO Fresh Food at 34.

Truth, Haas and Buitenkant Street

Truth's roastery on Buitenkant Street occupies a warehouse from around 1900, fitted out by the designer Haldane Martin in a steampunk style, chosen because roasters and espresso machines share the romance of steam-powered machinery.⁴ Its centerpiece is a working three-ton Probat roaster inside a circular steel shelving structure 6 m across, modeled on a Victorian gasworks.⁴

Haas began in early 2010 as an art and design shop on Rose Street in Bo-Kaap and later moved its coffee shop to 19 Buitenkant Street; the name is Afrikaans for "rabbit".⁵ Besides espresso it serves plunger coffee, the South African name for French press.⁵ Swan Cafe, a few numbers along at 29 Buitenkant Street, has tables outside.

Bo-Kaap and Wale Street

Bo-Kaap began in 1760, when Jan de Waal bought land on the slope and, from 1763, built small houses to rent to enslaved people; the first three stood at what are now 71 Wale Street, 42 Leeuwen Street and near Buitengracht Street.¹ The area has South Africa's largest concentration of pre-1850 architecture, the Bo-Kaap Museum occupies the oldest house still in its original form, and in May 2019 nineteen sites here became National Heritage Sites.¹

Coffee climbs Wale Street with the houses. Bean There is at 58 Wale Street, Honest Chocolate at 64A and Lekka Coffee Co. at 81, which opens 08:00–17:00 on weekdays and 09:00–12:00 on Sunday. Against the Grain, at 102 Wale Street, serves its coffee with koesisters at breakfast.⁶

A koesister is the Cape Malay cousin of the Afrikaner koeksister: an oval, cake-textured dumpling spiced with ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, aniseed and dried naartjie (tangerine) peel, dipped in hot syrup and rolled in coconut.⁷ Families traditionally make and eat them on Sundays, and they are best warm.⁷

De Waterkant and the Loop Street side

De Waterkant, just north of Bo-Kaap at the end of Somerset Road, is known for brightly painted buildings, cobbled streets and Cape Town's first rainbow crosswalk, painted in 2022.⁸ Origin and Loading Bay share Hudson Street, and Waterkant Street has Lunchworks at number 22, Caffe Hausbrandt at 32, Cafe Chiffon in the Old Cape Quarter at 72 and Cafe Max at 126.

Back toward the center, Giulio's at 16 Loop Street opens 07:00–15:00 on weekdays and 08:00–12:30 at weekends, and Heaven Coffee Shop at 38 Burg Street runs 07:30–17:00 from Monday to Saturday. Kamili Coffee Shop is at 56 Shortmarket Street.