Bootlegger Cape Quarter — Restaurant in City Centre

Painstakingly slow service but delicious food and drinks. I’ll start with the food because that was the best part. We started off with the dirty chai latter and immuni- tea. Chai latter was fantastic and immunity was underwhelming. They just throw some ginger slices, lemon and a cinnamon stick in water. I would suggest steeping it or grating/juicing the ginger for more flavour. If you drink it right away it’s pretty bland. The cinnamon was missing so I had to ask the waiter for it and his response was maybe I brought you the wrong tea but I doubt it. For breakfast we ordered two smoked salmon Benedict’s and the mascarpone pancakes. The Benedict were chefs kiss. The hollandaise was so good. I would have loved to dip chips or potatoes in it. Sadly the Benedict comes alone with nothing on the side. Nonetheless I would return for the Benedict, it is that good. The pancakes are not traditional Canadian pancakes smothered with maple syrup that boarders a dessert. They are fluffy on the inside and firmer in the outside. The closest comparison I could think of is a scone. I topped it with the whipped mascarpone which someone tasted like a whipped butter but firmer and the berry compote. It was a nice bite and I took the rest home. Would go well with some tea.

Now let’s move on to the service. It sucked. I’m not sure of our server was new or what kind of training they provide to their staff so I’m going to try not to be too hard. Once we were seated our server wanted to take our full order. We asked for our drinks and some time with the menu. He probably didn’t come back for 20 minutes. He stopped by and said he is just going to bring another table their bill and take our order. The time he took to say that he should have just taken our order. After he placed our order it took another hour for our food to come. We had two servers stop by and ask if we’ve ordered yet (this makes me wonder if the arrange there servers and tables by sections). By the time the second server asked it was at the 40 minute mark since we ordered so we explained it’s taking long. Our server then came over to explain its taking long because the food comes out in the order the orders are received. Totally unnecessary, you took too long to put in our order. So at about an hour we ask how much longer, he says sorry we ate really busy o can grab a manager. A young man comes (who I’m not sure is the manager) and explains they are understaff with only 3 people in the kitchen and food is taking an hour to an hour and a half. That they are willing to comp our drinks of we want to leave. I ask if it’s safe to assume our food will be out within the next 30 minutes and he says he can’t make any guarantees. I asked if he could tell us how many orders are before ours (something a manager would have checked before approaching our table) and he said he would go check. Within minutes our food was out. I also found it weird that the kitchen was understaffed but they were continuously seating people and large groups without mentioning “hey the kitchen is slammed and we are expecting an hour to an hour an a half wait time for food. It’s just been a common trend in this vacation that service has been a bit amateur. We were served cutlery without the right knife to cut our Benedict and we stole them off other tables that had vacated and not used them.

Overall the wait was worth the food but lower your expectations...

Cheers to the best coffee in Cape Town!

I have been trying out everything on the menu for the last week or so and I have found that the overall standard is excellent and continuously improving. This is an upper market quality cafe that is just as affordable as any ordinary cafe. The pastries are made by Oumeul which is an old home made style bakery that consistently provides high quality pastries. Bootlegger coffee has won multiple awards for best coffee in CPT so its an excellent affordable brand to experience for foreigners.

All coffees are double expresso and of consistent standard. With all honesty, I prefer to start my day with the first coffee being a Bootlegger.

Honorable mentions: It just so happened that when the cafe ran out of ice and was waiting on delivery, I wanted my friend to experience one of their healthy shakes that includes collogen and activated chia. This menu item required ice to make. The manager overheard my conversation and went out to buy ice himself instead of waiting for the ice to arrive. This is the type of responsibility and selfless service that takes any restaurant or cafe to 5 stars.

I would also like to mention Aqeelah, a sweet, efficient waiter that has served me twice in the last week with a generous amount of kindness and respect.

It's definitely worth the effort of choosing Bootlegger over any more convenient cafe, I can truly feel it when I work. Thanks for...

We have been regular customers for years and always been happy and keep going back. Today we brought a friend for lunch and I’m afraid the experience was rather different and disappointing. After ordering our waiter came back to inform that they only had potato rosti enough for two, not three. One of us was happy having sourdough bread instead but after another wait we were told that they had no sourdough bread left either so that order was cancelled. After another very long wait a different waiter informed us that they only had Rose wine left for one glass, we ordered two. We agreed to have a glass of red instead. To get the two glasses of wine to our table actually took as long as preparing the food ( now for two instead of three) This was Saturday and I would expect the place to be better prepared and organised than what we experienced Clearly understaffed and and very badly prepared and organised for a Saturday...