Pearl Cafe

PROFILED BY DEGROOTS MEDIA

Pearl Restaurant is renowned for its contemporary Asian-influenced cooking and its modern design. Its little sibling opened in winter 2008. Pearl Cafe is just a stone’s throw away from Pearl, which means that it is easy for everything to be managed from the main restaurant. The cafe is small, smart and casual, with a terrazzo floor, some stainless steel topped tables and moulded plastic chairs and a big central communal table equip with stools. To view the menu, simply cast your eyes over the large board, which, when you look beyond the script, is artistically manipulated to look like a section of the sky.

This is an ideal place for breakfast or lunch, or even perhaps a coffee and a little something sweet in between. Breakfast sways from healthy dishes such as a delightfully fresh fruit salad, with or without yoghurt, or real bircher muesli, to hot meals like organic coddled eggs with an enterprising list of accompaniments (try mushrooms, bacon, sage and burnt butter). For lunch, the list reads like a children’s counting story; four big salads, two bowls of soup, two hot dishes and one curry. There is also a delicious array of sandwiches and baguettes. The roast pumpkin and pine nut salad with rocket and a hint of fetta is served beautifully in a large charcoal grey bowl. Pearl Cafe experiments with lots of fresh clean flavours, full of zing and presented with imagination – for example, the soupe au pistou, a southern French vegetable soup, comes poured over a crusty roll.

Rita Erlich