Pizza for lunch at Posticino — a highlight of Sea Point

Posticino in Sea Point

There's some­thing decidedly hodge podge about Posticino – the vir­tu­ally emer­ald green sign indic­at­ing the res­taur­ant, the rather glam­or­ous and trendy out­door ter­race that looks like some­thing out of Italy, the almost over­cum­ber­some arches, and then the quaint, this-is-a-family-style rather dimly lit tavern-style res­taur­ant that all some­how man­ages to co-exist in a way that has the place con­stantly buzzing.

Okay, per­haps 'hodge podge' is a little derog­at­ory a term for this suc­cess­ful eat­ery. Eclectic would prob­ably be more apt, since it's some­thing of an icon in Sea Point and I need to treat it with more respect (I do so nat­ur­ally when I later sample the pizzas) ...

I'm a stranger to Sea Point. I'm here so rarely that I man­age to feel like a vis­itor in my own city, which makes for some inter­est­ing dis­cov­er­ies, and Posticino (although already dis­covered by all and sun­dry) is just such a find.

Adjacent to the res­taur­ant is a hair salon called some­thing exotic about hair (I for­get what), but whose employ­ees seem to fre­quent Posticino more than their own place of work. After soak­ing up the feel of the place for a minute we stand in some con­fu­sion on the ter­race, our appoin­ted lunch com­pan­ions fash­ion­ably late (must make a note to acquire at all costs the cest la vie atti­tude of late­com­ing that true Capetonians carry off with such aplomb). This is their local haunt.

Martin bussles over, not at all fazed by our dis­trac­ted demean­our. 'Table for two?' he asks suavely, whilst man­aging to look as if he is clean­ing tables, dis­trib­ut­ing menus and mak­ing way for us all at the same time, des­pite the fact that he's stand­ing quite still and suss­ing us out. It is years of prac­tice, obvi­ously, as we soon learn that he's been wait­ing on tables here for at least a decade.

Before we know it he returns with our drinks, a con­stant stream of chat­ter accom­pa­ny­ing his pas­sage from the bar indoors, dir­ec­ted at each of the tables he passes, en route to where we've settled nicely on the ter­race. At this stage we con­tem­plate that we may have made a mis­take sit­ting out of doors as the sun promptly does a duck behind an omin­ous look­ing cloud. But we are determ­ined to enter­tain the hint of spring that the whole of winter, until now, has promised.

The menus, rather unce­re­mo­ni­ously dumped in the centre of the table, reveal that the res­taur­ant is owned by Enrico and Gioacchino. Not hav­ing asked Martin's name as yet, I make the mis­take of ask­ing him which of the two he is. Martin imme­di­ately rests one wrist on his waist and the other clutches his chest cere­mo­ni­ously – 'neither, darling', he gushes. 'I'm Martin'.

Since it doesn't look as though we will meet either of the part­ners in the res­taur­ant, we are more than happy to be enter­tained by Martin, who is such an insti­tu­tion that his Winny the Pooh t-shirt — worn for years before he finally painted it and stretched it over can­vas for Enrico, who deman­ded that he do so since he wore the t-shirt so often – hangs above the bar in the restaurant's interior.

We cast our eye over the menu whilst we still have time. There are the usual sus­pects in the pizza line-up – regina, mar­gher­ita, quat­tro stag­gioni, sicili­ana – but then there are some rather delect­able ensembles – the funghineri with mush­rooms and gar­lic, or the pos­ti­cino that comes with mush­rooms, olives, asparagus, green pep­per and artichokes, or the cara­bin­ieri with chilli, gar­lic, green pep­pers, mush­rooms and olives. I can already see that mak­ing a choice is going to be dif­fi­cult. To add to our dilemma, there are also addi­tional pizza top­pings that include caviar, sal­mon, anchovies, vari­ous local cold meats (I believe the salami is the genu­ine art­icle), boc­con­cini, avo­cado, sun­dried toma­toes, pine­apple and the like.

After our party even­tu­ally arrives we find that the pasta is none too shabby either, as Andrew's ravi­oli is heav­enly. And the piz­zas, when they finally make their way to the table – by this time we're deep in con­ver­sa­tion – are argu­ably the tasti­est piz­zas I've had, ever, thanks to the thin and crispy base (Posticino claims the best tra­di­tional thin-base piz­zas out­side of Napoli) that puts paid to fran­chise rendi­tions, for roughly the same price. Our Posticino pizza is right on the mark – the table shares a couple of the restaurant's name­sakes and a cap­rese salad – and I could eas­ily eat this without feel­ing that my stom­ach has been dealt a blow by a fist­ful of cement.

I dis­cover that there is also a Posticino Express on Greenmarket Square, for those eager to share the taste on the hop. You can pick up an equally homemade and excel­lent pizza or pan­ini there. And the pizza top­pings at Posticino are some­thing of a mix and match, I later learn. You can choose the pizza top­pings for your pasta and vice versa. Nothing is sac­rasant here, and the theme is 'do as you'd do at home' – no more, no less.

I enter the tav­ern a little later on the pre­text of track­ing down the ladies (there is a uni­sex toi­let, and one only, so it must get a little hec­tic when it gets busy). Indoors, the res­taur­ant is hid­ing its own little Italian 'mamma' – pint-size, her hair scraped back into a bun, she sweeps past me whilst shout­ing orders in her leo­pard print top over a little black pen­cil skirt. I grin.

The walls are graced with mock-frescos, whilst black and white fam­ily pho­tos don the other spaces. The bar area is an eclectic mix of any­thing from flags to signed menus, whilst the clock on the wall is at least an hour early. Whoops, not so, time to pick a little someone up from school. We wave our good­byes, shout­ing the tra­di­tional 'ciao' across the res­taur­ant, as Martin blows us kisses, and swing down the ter­race to the busy Main Road of Sea Point — taxi hoot­ers blast­ing and a scru­pu­lous car attend­ant who insists on char­ging us for the extra 15 minutes park­ing we appear to have nabbed.

Contact Details:
Posticino, Main Road, Sea Point, Cape Town
Telephone: +27 (0)21 449‑4014

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