Bird's Boutique Café – on its way to becoming iconic in the city bowl

Bird’s Boutique Café

A meal at Bird's Boutique is some­thing of an exper­i­ence, and if you haven't already stopped off to taste Mathilde Stegmann and her daughter's delect­able dishes, then I would advise that you do.

Set on the corner of Bree and Church Street in a build­ing that is most un-restaurant-like, there isn't any­thing quite like this café in Cape Town. The concept defies cat­egor­isa­tion, and yet the food is simple, home-cooking. Described as a 'unique, artistic refuge' the café, des­pite sound­ing such, is not pre­ten­tious and doesn't work hard at just being what it is — a kit­chen that feeds its pat­rons ser­i­ously yummy and dis­tinct­ive food, with none of the gloss, glam­our and self-indulgent osten­ta­tion that some other res­taur­ants manage.

The first impres­sion to strike you on walk­ing through the door­way, is that you have per­haps entered a back­stage set build. With a cur­tain divid­ing the kit­chen from the  the res­taur­ant, ceramic birds sus­pen­ded from the ceil­ing, and over­turned crates for chairs (don't worry there are cush­ions to soften the perch) you would be for­given for think­ing sim­ilar, but you soon real­ise that it has more to do with ser­i­ously uncon­ven­tional inform­al­ity than the theatre, even if bird­song accom­pan­ies your meal.

Mathilde and her daugh­ter hail from Swakopmund in Namibia and named the res­taur­ant after the feathered vari­ety for whom Mathilde has much affin­ity, par­tic­u­larly seagulls. The main emphasis is on fresh, organic fare and the need to slow down, which you do auto­mat­ic­ally as food served here is of the slow vari­ety (both the ser­vice and the time alloc­ated to pre­pare your meal).

There is a real sense of the jour­ney of food. Seasonal veg and fruit lie in crates just vis­ible below the cur­tain line, wait­ing for use in the next freshly squeezed juice, and the menu describes what blend of herbs, veget­ables and other ingredi­ents are involved in your menu item of choice. Menus are hand-written, prob­ably because they change every day as a sign of the sea­sonal emphasis, but drinks stay the same, and I can recom­mend their organic coffee.

Despite the pace of food pro­duc­tion, Bird's is pop­u­lar. There is sel­dom a dull moment  and as people stop to greet col­leagues and friends on their way in or out of the door you real­ise that Bird's has fol­low­ers not just cas­ual cus­tom­ers. And it is no sur­prise given the fla­vour­ful food!

We've been to Bird's on a couple of occa­sions fol­low­ing a meet­ing in town with col­leagues just around the corner. The food is sump­tious! There is no scrimp­ing on ingredi­ents or taste. The price of menu items reflects this, although people don't seem to mind, given that this simple, sat­is­fy­ing food is so obvi­ously home-made without spar­ing any detail, and the por­tions are generous.

On our way through the res­taur­ant, our col­league stops to greet a couple of journ­al­ists — one of them is based at the Beeld and the other is a guest journ­al­ist up from Durban; they're obvi­ously swop­ping trade secrets. They're already hard at work on their gen­er­ous cups of cof­fee, and one look at the mon­ster slice of quiche before one of them on the table, and all thought of net­work­ing flies out of the win­dow. On the other side of the res­taur­ant four gents who must be in advert­ising or design of some sort are bent in dis­cus­sion, whilst the wait­ress scribbles their order in pen­cil in in her booklet.

Their sea­sonal tomato soup and quiche of the day are extraordin­ary. Despite read­ing the entire menu and being more than a little swayed by a couple of items, I suc­cumbed to the quiche and wasn't sorry. It was so creamy and rich that I found myself clos­ing my eyes and hmmming with satisfaction.

Whilst I haven't sampled the sand­wiches, I can tell you that they come heaped with ingredi­ents (as did the quiche) and when you man­age to get your mouth around them (quite an endeav­our, I should ima­gine) your mouth should explode with the vari­ous com­bin­a­tions of avo, tomato, smoked chicken, moz­zarella, sprouts, green, seeds and a good dol­lop of oil and bal­samic vinegar.

Our col­league ordered the cheese­cake and upon see­ing the look on my face, handed me a fork. It came on a crust of note, des­pite, or is that inspite, of its being wheat-free. Mountains of creamy yet light cheese inter­spersed with poppy­seed and rais­ins and all topped with a huge dol­lop of cream fresh from the farm — I ask you, what more could you want?

Address & Contact Details:
127 Bree St, Cape Town City Centre, Cape Town
Telephone: +27 (0)21 426‑2534

Useful Links:
Cape Town Restaurants
Things to Do in Cape Town
Cape Town Coffee Route
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