Café Espresso has lost its sign at 49 Cork Road —but the Lavazza Coffee Logo (Italian premier coffee) still hangs underneath where the main sign used to be, and filled me with anticipation of a unique coffee experience. Arriving for lunch, I asked the waitress why I could not get through on the phone to book. She said the phones had been cut off. I chose a table on the verandah with a cooling wind but even this was not sufficient to offset the searing heat from the hot tin roof, so I moved to one of the tables in the garden. by le connoisseur
Joined by my lunch guest, our obliging waitress presented us with beautifully bound menus inside of which were grubby, greasy, torn and incomplete printed menus for breakfast (until 11.30hrs) and lunch. The dinner menu I looked at later was also in the same state of decrepitude. Breakfast is a larger and more exciting selection of dishes than lunch, especially for vegetarians, who have a lunch choice of just two dishes — a pasta dish or a haloumi salad. Although an adequate selection of wines is listed at the back of the menu, after considerable investigation our waitress told us that the only available bottles were “Chardonnay (US$25) and Pinotage” or we could have wine by the glass (US$4).
Being mid-week, we decided on non-alcoholic beverages to accompany my guest’s fillet steak (US$18), medium-rare and my grilled bream fillets (US$16). I was glad we were seated in the very pleasant garden as we had plenty of time to enjoy the ambience. Our order took 50 minutes to arrive. It now being 2pm we did not quibble about our cold plates and “set too” hungrily. We did pause long enough to examine the steak which was cut in a way unknown to us both. It was cooked medium-well, not as requested, nor cut as a fillet should be, but it was pleasant enough to eat. The accompanying potato wedges, however, were barely warm, and oozing oil.
I was pleased I had asked for extra salad in place of starch, as this was the most impressive dish of the meal — fresh green leaves with tomato, pepper, carrot and onion and a pleasant dressing. My bream, though a generous portion of two fillets, was dry and overcooked and lacked the “tomato salsa….and lemon butter sauce” promised on the menu.
Our choice of dessert was made easy by the fact that only three (US$4) were listed — ice-cream and chocolate sauce (of course!), cake selection of which there was only chocolate, and fruit salad. The first two it was — both beautifully decorated with a strawberry, and apple slices — but my ice-cream was only a single scoop with little sauce. In contrast, the cake was a generous slice of very excellent chocolate delight!
And so to the much-anticipated Lavazza coffee — alas, not available, so we contented ourselves with a cup of our local excellent La Lucie filter coffee to complete our meal which proved rather expensive at US$51 before tip.
Deluxe Coffee Shop 2 Plates Expect to spend US$5 – US$30 per head 49 Cork Road, Avondale, Harare
- Chamisa under fire over US$120K donation
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Pension funds bet on Cabora Bassa oilfields
- Councils defy govt fire tender directive
