Truth Coffee's After Dark 'Gastro-Kaap' dining experience showcases SA's best staples

While caffeine enthusiasts get their fix at Truth Café – Truth Coffee’s steampunk-style headquarters in the Cape Town CBD – during the day, from 6pm unti 12am it’s all cocktails and cuisine.

Local is, well, lekker

“We brainstormed some cool – or rather ‘kif’ – ideas and kept one-upping each other until we hit on a concept to serve up re-imagined, sophisticated versions of the typical ‘Sowf Effrekin’ comfort food we all grew up with” says Truth Coffee founder David Donde.

“The menu celebrates our diversity and traditions, icons and clichés without taking them too seriously. Locals will appreciate the effort we’ve gone to to elevate and create luxury versions of everyday staples like pap and wors, samoosas and frikkedels. And for non-locals, we put together a comprehensive glossary explaining everything from babalas and bredie to papsak, Oros and regmakers,” he adds.

The cocktail features drinks like Stoner (Blitsem Witblits, ginger puree, lime and hemp) and Orosie (blood orange juice, Triple Sec and Grenadine).

Light meals include Bovril-y on toast, a bietjie biltong (ostrich carpaccio, exotic mushroom biltong and meat jelly on a buttery brioche) and nie Jou Ma se yellowtail frikkadel nie (yellowtail pâté ‘meatballs’ with gluten-free garlic bread and apricot jam).

Mains meals comprise a mixed grill (barbeque-basted free-range rack of lamb, chicken and handcrafted boerewors with spicy umfino and grilled corn); 100% vegan sosatie; and Durban-inspired slow-cooked lamb bunny chow.

The dessert menu showcases some of your tannie’s Sunday best desserts like melktert (white couverture chocolate, coffee ice cream, mango passion cremeux on a crispy Speculaas biscuit), malva pudding (with Amarula and Valhrona chocolate) and peppermint crisp tart (biscuit, salted caramel, chocolate ganache, milk chocolate and mint ice cream and Valhrona chocolate).

Truth. After Dark is open Tuesday to Saturday from 6pm until midnight.