Award-winning and rated as best bar in Cape Town, Orphanage Cocktail Emporium will close its doors as a cocktail bar temporarily from 15 November onwards, preparing for its opening next year in the new Speakers-Corner building on Church Square in the Cape Town Continue reading →
Tag Archives: St Francis Children’s Home
Orphanage Cocktail Emporium creates home for ‘orphan chefs’, Johann’s Dining Room the first!
Since Orphanage Cocktail Emporium opened on fashionable foodie Bree Street in Cape Town almost three years ago, it has established itself as a classy establishment with award-winning bartenders and unusual bespoke cocktails. More recently it has added a restaurant on the lower level, accessible via the Bree Street entrance, or its own dedicated entrance on Orphan Street. It has decided to give back to the industry by allowing ‘orphan chefs‘ to use their space for a year to set up a restaurant, which the chefs would not have been able to afford to do on their own, and to overcome the barriers to entry.
Chef Johann Breedt is the first ‘orphan chef’ to have been ‘adopted’ by Orphanage, 
and took over the kitchen in December. He was a finalist in the first season of Kokkedoor. I first met him when he was working at the Executive Club at The Westin Cape Town, where we were invited to a Graham Beck MCC tasting and lunch, and I remember the lunch as being excellent. Chef Johann moved to Shimmy Beach Club, then joined Taj, before moving to Orphanage. He trained at Chef Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons and The Ritz Hotel in the UK. He also previously worked at The Twelve Apostles Hotel & Spa and The Lanzerac. Continue reading →
WhaleTales Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines: 11 April
Tourism, Food, and Wine news headlines
* The MyCiTi Bus service has announced that it is using another bus size for its Cape Town International airport run from Monday onwards, to allow it to use the larger buses on its new Atlantis route, which opens tomorrow. Buses which had been ordered for the Atlantis route have not been delivered! It would appear that the City’s planning of its bus service, and continuous introduction of new routes is straining its service, with numerous complaints by commuters of buses not running according to schedule. The change in bus size impacts on the route to the airport, and excludes certain bus stops temporarily.
* USA-based Domino’s Pizza, a ‘world leader in pizza delivery‘, with 10800 outlets in 70 countries, has signed a license agreement with Taste Holdings, owners of 150 Scooters and St Elmo’s pizza outlets in South Africa, to rebrand to Domino’s.
* Google is looking to accept direct accommodation advertising on its site, in direct opposition to booking sites such as Continue reading →
Orphanage Cocktail Emporium Sweet Service and Cassis Salon de Thé Sour Service Awards!
The Sweet Service Award goes to Orphanage Cocktail Emporium, which has developed a reputation for bespoke bartending in Cape Town and is winning awards for its creative cocktails. The Award recognises its service to the community in its first year of operation. Located in Orphan Street (corner Bree Str), it decided to donate R15 of the sales of each ‘More Tea Vicar’ cocktail since its inception, to acknowledge the special relationship they have with the St Paul’s Anglican Church across the road, which helped to establish the St Francis Children’s Home in 1919. The children’s home now operates from Athlone, accommodating 55 children. At a first anniversary celebration two weeks ago, Orphanage donated R 41000 to the St Francis Children’s Home.
The Sour Service Award goes to Cassis Salon de Thé in the Garden’s Centre, whose staff clean the restaurant floor around the customers who are still in the restaurant half an hour before its closing time. They are so busy cleaning that they no longer attend to their customers. The noisy moving of the tables and cleaning of the floor was done in full view of the manager, who expressed extreme apologies when he was called to the table. A Tweet about the poor service remains unresponded to by Cassis.
The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog. Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com. Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.