There are two ways to go when visiting Makers Landing for lunch. Adopt a pick and mix approach, with everyone choosing something from a different food pod and sharing bites. Or decide on one of the three sit down restaurant spaces, Pitso’s Kitchen, Emazulwini and Conscious Meat Merchants. We made several circuits, reading menus, watching the vendors cooking and allowing the aromas to make up our minds before ordering and paying at each of our chosen food pods. Then we settled at a long table in the main hall. We were given approximate cooking times to come back and collect our food. Everything is cooked fresh on ordering, although a few vendors came and found us with our order as soon as it was ready.
Truly outstanding burgers, as well as a small plates menu and a specials board, all featuring ethically reared halaal meat. This is a collaboration between Conscious Carnivores and Frankie Fenner Meat Merchants with a butchery counter and a busy eatery, where you can eat in the fully halaal alcohol-free seating area or take-out to any of the other communal tables. They give you a table number on ordering and bring to your table when its ready.
After tasting both my son’s juicy grass-fed beef burger and my husband’s succulent chicken prego burger, and gorgeous thick cut chips, I chatted to Andrew of the FFMM side of the collab. He told us that Frankie Fenner were wanting to make their ethically reared meat available to more of Cape Town and were looking at halaal options. “We stumbled upon the two Mohammeds and their Conscious Carnivore pop-up eatery. It was a match made in heaven – they have the right ethics and principles, everything that we’re doing at FFMM they were doing.” The collaboration started with the idea of being a butchery, but they quickly realised that to build a following and catch people’s interest they would have to cook some of it onsite. It has grown into a very popular eatery, staying open for dinner on Friday and Saturdays, although the butchery is always at the heart of the project.
They source from some of the same farms as FFMM does, but the meat of course goes through a different halaal abattoir and processes. “The halaal community doesn’t have many destinations to come and eat that are purely halaal, not just halaal-friendly. We have a dedicated seating area that is family-friendly, alcohol free, and fully halaal,” said Andrew. We could taste the excellence of the meat and will be back to shop for steaks very soon.
Indian street food with a contemporary twist, the first thing that caught my eye at the Kapoochka stand was the trays of poochkas being deftly prepared. An explosive pop is one of their taglines and they really are explosions of flavour. Kapoochka is a family business which Hitesh Panchal started when he lost his job as chef and catering manager at the CTICC during lockdown. His sons were busy on the stand too, one of whom is the creative force behind the dessert pops in between studying mechanical engineering.
As well as traditional pani puri and dahi bata puri, Hitesh has come up with some innovative twists: Poochka pops with tasty filllings such as mushrooms or chicken tikka, and a dessert menu, with the crisp globes filled with sweet treats like cheesecake, banoffee pie and chocolate, which I plan to go back for!
We ordered pani puri and the Dahi samosas, a flavour-packed meal in themselves – two large Indian-style samosas stuffed with spicy braised potato and peanuts, fried, then opened up lengthways and drizzled with four different sauces, spice and gram flour. Indian samosa pastry is a little thicker than our South African ones with poppy seeds in the mix, Hitesh told me, and just as crisp and delicious.
A business that starts with chicken wings, Side Wing goes for the comfort food factor all the way. Their base is in Ottery, partners Ashleigh Frans and Strone Henry started in a home kitchen in 2017, and they have different specials every month. The girls voted the Hottery Doughnut Chicken Burger a winner – buttermilk marinated chicken breast deep fried and dipped in chili oil, with pickles and mustard mayo on a homemade doughnut shaped brioche bun with a sweet honey glaze. Intense flavours and they loved the sweet/savoury cheesy comfort food vibe. Strone created the original doughnut burger as a joke, but it has since become one of their most popular offerings.
And lest you think there’s nothing for health-conscious foodies, visit the IndiKaap stall where Michele Naidoo Mistry specialises in Ayurvedic nutrition, beautifully subtle vegan street food dishes made with care. We enjoyed the Dosa with sweet potato – a thin and crispy lentil and rice flour pancake folded over gently spiced sweet potato and served with three different dipping sauces.
If you’re interested in discovering your Ayurvedic constitution and exploring the best way to use its principles to improve your health, Michele is a nutritional consultant and also holds cooking classes. More about that here https://indikaap.com
Replete and satisfied we were heading out when the colourful chocolate mecca that is the Afrikoa workshop and outlet pulled me back. I already knew the fabulous Africa-centric bean to bar producer of chocolate bars, but hadn’t heard they’d launched into truffle and bonbon making, here at their Makers Landing artisan workshop. We spent ages selecting a box of 9 different chocolates, agonising over our choices. Then promptly sat down to taste them at the shocking pink tables outside Makers Landing and polished them all off in one go. Salted caramel, combinations with nuts, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, all delicious.
One visit wasn’t enough to sample everything. Top of my list for the return visit is the set tasting menu from Mmabatho Molefe at Emazulwini, a tiny four table sit down restaurant overlooking the quay. Mmabatho comes from a fine-dining background at Salsify and Aubergine, and uses those skills to present traditional Zulu cuisine in a new framework.
Can’t wait to return to Makers Landing soon.
Pitsos Kitchen
https://www.instagram.com/pitsos_kitchenza
Emazulwini
https://www.instagram.com/emazulwini_restaurant
Kapoochka
https://www.instagram.com/kapoochka
Conscious Meat Merchants
https://www.instagram.com/consciousmeatmerchants
Sidewing
https://www.instagram.com/sidewing17
Indikaap
https://indikaap.com
Afrikoa
https://afrikoa.com
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