Kloof Street has become the number one place to visit if your stomach is grumbling in Cape Town. There are a variety of places to eat that cater for a wide range of taste sensations. There is ample accommodation for the tourists who swarm to Cape Town in the summer months to enjoy all the festivities and sunshine. Locals can drive through to Kloof Street, as it can be accessed from two main roads that traverse the famous Cape mountain range.
It is recommended that hungry guests park and walk down the street to get an idea of the options available. If you are new to the Cape and would like to try something along the seafood route, there are two popular restaurants.
Ocean Basket has a reputation for serving some of the best seafood available. Their hospitality is also well known. The Kloof Street branches have options for sit-down or take away. They serve everything from calamari to line-fish of the day. They are known for their enormous platters that can serve from one person up to six.
Further up the road towards the mountain, is another seafood restaurant that opened up within the last few years. Jimmy Killer Prawns has branches in both Cape Town and Johannesburg. The meaning behind the word “Killer” in the title has to do with both the size and the spiciness of their prawns. They are famous for their hot sauce and have many spicy dishes. This includes their North African spicy sauce, which douses prawns that have been flamed in liquor. Not all of their dishes are spicy. They make sushi and steak for those who don’t fancy prawns.
Part of Kloof Street’s buzz is the studio that is placed right in the centre of it all. Long Street Studios is the building where South Africa’s Free T.V. Channel, e-TV, is produced. A lot of advertisements are also shot at the studio. The buzz works its way from the centre out and into the street, where local celebrities can be seen drinking coffee and enjoying the Cape Town sun.
If you are looking for Mediterranean food, you should visit Zucca. It’s a small restaurant for all Italian lovers. Their menu consists of gorgeous pastas with true napoleon sauce and olives. The ambiance is small-town Italian with stunning decorations that make you feel like you are sitting in Italy. They have wood-fire oven cooked pizzas as part of their menu.
There is another restaurant between Zucca and Ocean Basket that does mouth-watering gourmet pizzas. Da Vinci Pizza opened up earlier this year, and is a branch from the famous original in Harfield Village. Don’t think that this is your ordinary pizza place with Hawaii and Margherita pizzas. They have a variety of toppings, with their all time specialty being a cranberry and Camembert cheese pizza. The chef recommends adding bacon as an extra topping to enhance the flavour. Their innovative table clothes are part of the attraction for families and students. Since the name is Da Vinci, after the artist, the table clothes are plain brown paper. All customers get a set of crayons and are encouraged to draw on the tables. The best drawings are placed on the wall.
Café Vespa also has some novelty value. This cocktail bar has Vespa bikes for rental. The café invites tourists to take the bikes out for a drive around the city. Once the evening sets in, tourists and locals alike are encouraged to sit out on the balcony and enjoy the view with one of the cocktails or special coffees available. They have a Tapas menu of salads, skewers and sandwiches. Their cocktails are a delight, the popular one being a chocolate martini. Ask the bartender to add a pinch of chilli to the chocolate martini for a bit of flare.
Kloof Street has its own private multimedia tertiary education centre, City Varsity, situated at the bottom of the road. Here students from all over South Africa join the buzz of the street, adding to its creative flair. City Varsity courses include film school and animation. It’s the only private creative tertiary school in Cape Town.
With a large amount of businessmen meeting clients at the various coffee shops, actors striking deals with film makers and students to ensure that restaurants have reasonable prices, the street has become a community all of its own. People live, eat and work in Kloof. The youthful vibe of the road makes Kloof Street one of the most popular roads in Cape Town.
Kloof Street is becoming one of the popular places for breakfast, lunch and supper. It is ideally situated for businessmen, families and tourists. The atmosphere is relaxed and the view is gorgeous. With good company, a beautiful view and exquisite food, life doesn’t get any better.
Celeste writes for Cape Codogan, who specialize in accommodation in Cape Town.

York has become the first English city to ban the sale of foie gras in all council premises in the city, after a motion proposed by labour Councillor Paul Blanchard was unanimously passed by fellow councillors.

Foie Gras pate is produced from the livers of ducks and geese, where pneumatic pumps are used to force feed the birds, expanding their livers to almost ten times their normal size. It is this practice which incurs the wrath of animal rights groups and provided the basis on which Blanchard made his proposal to the council.

He said: “Using livers from birds that have been force-fed is a barbaric practice.” The councillor originally wanted to copy the action taken by Chicago, which totally banned the sale of foie gras anywhere in the city, but legal advisors pointed out that it wasn’t enforceable so he reluctantly proposed this alternative motion:

“This council believes that this intolerably cruel and painful practice is unnecessary and should end. The city of Chicago, USA, has shown tremendous compassionate leadership in their brave decision to ban foie gras in its shops and restaurants. The torture of small innocent animals should not be a matter of personal dietary choice.”

In setting the ban the council is hoping that shops, restaurants and hotels in York will follow suit and refuse to serve the French delicacy, but the council have no powers to force proprietors to apply the ban.

However, the decision has been met with derision in France, where producers of Foie Gras accuse the council of gross hypocrisy. They argue that there are many other farming practices in the UK where animals are treated far worse than the ducks and geese that they raise. They particularly point fingers at UK factory farming where millions of chickens are reared entirely within metal cages and ask why that is less brutal than their farming methods. French commentators have questioned why this issue is regarded as so important when the war against terror, suicide bombers and famine are surely more compassionate and worthy human causes.

So, even though this decision has been denounced in France, Blanchard is hoping that businesses in York will view the ban more favourably. But it remains to be seen whether the shops, restaurants and hotels in York will heed the council’s request to stop serving foie gras on their premises. What is certain is that the issue has received a lot of media coverage and may prompt other councils to take similar action.