We decided on Wednesday morning, seeing as though we were hanging quite badly, to stop off at Carlucci’s in Rondebosch, because we were on our way past it in pursuit of the V&A Waterfront for Sebago Docksides and Diesel Jeans.

The name carlucci’s sounds pretty good and from the outside the place looks semi-alrightish, but walking in and actually experiencing the horror show is another story.

carlucci’s in Rondebosch. Not my vibe. 

To fit in with my vibe of healthy eating during the day, and red wine abuse at night, I thought I would order the chicken salad. A chicken wrap was ordered for my wingman, and a toasted chicken sandwich for my other wingman.

So we order…and we wait…and I start to feel like shotgunning all those drinks the previous night was a bad idea. About 10 minutes go by when Albert Einstein who happens to be manning the restaurant today ambles along and tells us there is no lettuce.

The way she told us was classical though, saying that there would be no lettuce to put in the chicken wrap. Quietly not mentioning the fact that I had actually ordered something based on lettuce!

So I mentioned this, and then ordered something else which we won’t speak of as it’s not even worth mentioning.

I’m not very religious, but a God of sorts was clearly directly above us, just playing the fool! The chicken sandwich arrived and if I had shown a photo here of that thing, you would actually die.

Two pieces of white bread, no lettuce, hardly any chicken to speak of and it came in at R28. Do you know what sandwich you can get at Woolworths for R28? An awesome one! And Woolies sandwiches are fairly expensive. Albert did pull R3 off the price of the sambo when we told her that we didn’t even get lettuce on it.

The bill arrived and I had been charged R44 for a salad that I actually didn’t receive. I told Albert this, and she then apologised and charged me the R33 or something instead for the most hideous roll I have ever had in my life.

JESUS carlucci’s, what type of business are you trying to run? Kids at market days could offer much better service and quality than this.

If you want to experience this, it’s actually worth wasting the R27 and trying out the chicken sandwich at carlucci’s. It is absolutely mind bending how shit it is. You could try a salad, but they probably won’t have lettuce.

We probably should have taken note of the fact that there is never anyone at carlucci’s, that inside it is like a dark cellar, and that on the day in question, there were three other people in the place.

I for one thought that carlucci’s were in the mob business and they were trying to kill me. Surely service and food like this WILL kill a person? Better yet, I thought that maybe they were organising a hit on me. I was certain Bugsy was going to walk in with a henchman, and he would point a machine gun at me. I would flip the table over, and he would shoot at it. I would naturally not get hit by any of these bullets, as in these movie scenes, we all know that wooden tables are miraculously bullet proof.

They would run out of ammo and have to reload. I would take a small gun out of my leather manbag, and pop two caps directly into the thugs heads, killing them. I would go on to be the new leader of the carlucci’s Mob.

My readers would argue that writing rubbish like this on a Friday morning must surely mean that I am drunk. Well surely I should be drunk, considering the weekend started yesterday? Surely? So yes, your suspicions are correct.

So that’s another place in Cape Town not to got to. Not that you would have considered it anyway. I have driven past carlucci’s in Rondebosch hundreds of times, and not once have I felt the need to go in. A hangover made me do it.

But now you know…Skip carlucci’s in Rondebosch.

I’m pretty sure with that service and quality of food, it will be closing down soon.

I will let you know when it happens so we can toast to it. It’s definitely worth cracking a bottle of Veuve for that day.

Sean Lloyd

Editor