I had a fairly chilled day on Clifton 4th on Saturday, although I’m starting to notice a bit of a downward trend on Clifton 4th these days.

You know, as you walk onto the beach from the sidewalk, there seems to just be a lot of litter there. Not ideal. That’s why I change of plan was made yesterday to head to my favourite place in the world, Llandudno. Much better:

Llandudno…yesterday…touch yourself in inappropriate places… 

Anyway on Saturday after Clifton we headed off to La Med to get some food, cocktails etc and just chill out because the day had been so demanding!

So I cruise off to the guys bathroom and never in my life have I seen such a disgusting display by a restaurant, especially a place such as La Med. I mean, we’d expect it at Tin Roof at 4am on a Friday, but not at La Med at around 5pm on a Saturday, when the place is not even that busy.

I just find it funny that brands such as Havaianas and Guess are now associating themselves with La Med, and all they can offer is a bathroom of filth. I don’t have photos, but anyone there would back me up, and no one at La Med can deny that the bathroom was disgusting. The place basically smelt like piss, there was a bin in the corner with flies hovering around it, and there were flies everywhere, even on the urinals.

I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but maybe guys, just maybe, a little revamp is in order? The bathrooms are not looking great and I think we can all agree on that. I always judge places by their bathrooms and if a bathroom is filthy, one wonders how hygienic the rest of the place is.

Places such as Hemisphere have their bathrooms sorted, but La Med are slacking in this regard. Just because the bathroom is not the entrance to the restaurant, does not mean that it should look and smell like filth.

In fact, the bathroom should be regularly cleaned and be one of the cleanest places in the restaurant.

I just think Saturday was a major let down, and if I were one of the brands associating myself with La Med, I would get them to sort out those bathrooms immediately if I were going to continue a working relationship with them.

Come on La Med, let’s sort it out now and get ready for a pumping summer.

Sean Lloyd

Editor 

I was out and about shmoozing last week in and amongst Cape Town’s elite. It’s what I do. It’s how insane life is right now. So we went to some sort of relaunch of Marimba Cafe at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. I say “some sort of” because I’m not quite sure why I was there, but I was hooked at the open bar nature of the invite. It’s funny because someone was telling me the other day that there is some sort of economic recession. I honestly was not aware of this. If I was, I probably would not have gone in the Ford F250 stretch limo.

I won’t lie, Marimba Cafe is one of the most stunning restaurants I have been to in ages. Something about it just feels warm and comforting, as though you were chilling at home with your best friends. I think the photos speak for themselves and it is DEFINITELY worth a visit or seventeen. A seperate smoking bar, a DJ section upstairs and a visible kitchen makes it an old school experience of fine dining and style. We were given all sorts of things to eat, from espetadas to calamari and it was all so amazing, I wanted to eat it all.

There was this dude there, and people were claiming that he had stayed in a house with cameras for about three months. “Big deal” I thought, noting that I have many cameras in my house, and I stay in it all the time. He goes by the name Ferdi. Something about a Little Sister, or a Big Brother or something. I wasn’t really listening. Not quite sure about this one. It seems so spiced that I just HAD to pull the cheesiest smile in the history of the world. Because I knew I was being Punk’d. Ashton still has not called me, but even if he did I would not answer his call. I have more important things on my agenda.

Sean, are you alright?

What economic recession?

This is what we do for a living. ALL the time.

Kicking the Marimba

Cape Town’s elite — Chilling

Chilled.

Yeah so that’s the direction my life is currently heading in. Not much to say about this whole recession other than the fact that I think people are lying about it.

Note: A major thanks to Murray for taking these awesome photos on the night!

Sean Lloyd

Editor

I recently discovered The Google inside The Internet Machine and it’s absolutely amazing! I was searching fairly simple things like Midget Porn, Circus Freaks and Ron Jeremy when I decided to put this so called “search engine” to use.

And the results were admirable!

I searched for carlucci’s in rondebosch and came across a little piece on a webplot called My Rondebosch if you click here. It contains this pearler, and I quote:

“Sounds delicious, and if the comment from our waiter – that carlucci’s is already turning over three times more in a day than Blake’s did – is anything to go by, then owner Ian Williams is sure to make a success of it”

Sweet mother of God.

If carlucci’s is turning over three times as much in a day than Blake’s did, all I can say is Blake’s must have been SUPER KAK! Or alternatively, Blake’s were turning out between 5 and 6 customers a day.

Or al-alternatively, the reason they are turning over so much more is because you literally need to pay in Jesus Christ for a chicken sambo!

And besides, carlucci’s don’t even have a website. If they were half decent, they would have a website. It’s like any chick in Cape Town who tells you “Well actually I’m a model, and an actress, but I’m just not working at the moment, taking a bit of time off from the industry”

How funny is it that they refer to it as THE INDUSTRY?! As thought it’s the only industry that keeps the coreolis (Spelling?) effect of the earth going! BULLSHIT! If you were any decent you would be modeling in New York, or you would be in Cape Town with loads of work, or you would be acting in LA.

I’m struggling to get my head around all of this on a Monday morning.

Sean Lloyd

Editor

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 

Following on from THIS post by Chris over at iMod, we were to experience the very worst of Beluga yesterday.

After bending Saturday out of shape at Bishops (More on that later), I could hardly eat the whole of yesterday due to my stomach feeling like a cement mixer. Hanging like the Mona Lisa, some of the girls decided we should hit Beluga for half price sushi. Which was a great idea after Saturday shattered our wallets as a truck load of alcohol was bought, and consumed. All in me!

Anyway, we arrived at Beluga yesterday at 4pm, where I was met by three girls. Luckily two more guys arrived, otherwise I would have looked like the gay best friend. Not ideal when I’m trying to score supermodels.

So our waiter Dave took our orders and we waited…and waited…and waited. Then another waiter arrived and said he was taking over from Dave, but bizarrely, Dave was still around, just serving other tables. After waiting over an hour for sushi for six people, I strolled over to the manager to see if our chef was maybe not still catching the fish in Norway, and harvesting the rice in India. I also thought he might have taken a quick jog to Clifton to get some seaweed.

The manager assured me that everything would be taken care of, and he said it was strange that our order took so long because it was not busy at all.

I then went back to our table, we poured some soy sauce into the bowl vibe, and out came a fruit fly. Awesome. I’m not too stressed about that though, as it’s hardly going to kill me. I partied at Tin Roof in the day so my immune system is like an iron wall.

Then we realised that both of the bottles of soy sauce were the low sodium variety, but one had a red cap (Indicating regular soy sauce) and the other had a green cap (Indicating low sodium) Both bottles stated low sodium. Now this isn’t too much of a problem, and I’m not one of those tools who complains about these minor details, but sometimes it’s the attention to detail that turns a place from good into great.

So our sushi eventually arrived, we smashed it down, and when the bill came we had been given R100 off, plus one or two free Cokes (Cola, not cocaine).

Which is cool, but I still can’t understand why Beluga is slipping like this. Word spreads quickly in Cape Town of bad service, and while I will still go back to Beluga, you can’t offer service like that to international visitors.

Anyway, I’m sure we will be back soon to see if things have been corrected.

Click HERE for the Beluga website.

Sean Lloyd

Editor

There are many reasons to go venture into the urban paradise of Constantia. The main reason though is because the amount of hot Constantia mommies are ridiculous. You can basically close your eyes, point anywhere and there will be a MILF. I know this because I tried it and I landed on the fittest, tightest body I have ever seen in my life.

Definitely keeping it in shape for the hubby.

But while the Constantia Pick ‘n Pay is a glorious field of cuisine, it’s the sushi bar that is the attraction.

They have authentic chefs at the sushi bar, and not Ronel from Bellville, so you know it’s good!  There is an actual bar where you can sit at and eat, or you can just have a take out like I did. I ordered the take out and headed back to Casa del Lloyd to listen to some Roger Goode and eat some sushi.

Only then would I touch myself…

And let me tell you…it was good. The sushi.

I got 14 pieces, and it was the “Rainbow roll selection” I thought it appropriate because I saw a rainbow today. The pieces were divided up as such:

6 vegetarian

4 tuna and avocado

4 salmon, crab and avocado

All inside you

In and around your mouth

I also creamed myself with this:

Yeah, I basically bought half a litre of mayonnaise, and that is the packet it came in. I put that mayo in and around my mouth. And my pants. I’m not sure it was such a good idea ingesting it though because the ingredients list is in foreign. And we all know how dangerous that Chinese sounding stuff can be. Remember? Not? You obviously aren’t well read then. You might recall stories of dodgy ingredients being put into their foods. But I ate an hour ago and I still seem fine so I’m fairly confident that I will live few more days.

I do however think that I ate some pieces of a baby, because on the mayo packaging, there was a picture of a baby, and “500g” next to it. So I paid for half a kilogram of a baby. Awesome. The FBI will be over any second now.

Babies: Tastier than you might think

Did I mention that for that sushi, it was R52? I think that’s fairly damn good! I will definitely eat that again.

Where? Pick ‘n Pay Constantia sushi bar

What? Sushi

When? All year round.

Extras? Hot, rich, tappable Constantia mommies

Sean Lloyd

Editor

Look, this does not happen at the finer establishments in Cape Town, but it does happen at some of the not-so-kosher places in Cape Town. I’m talking about that lying, conniving, blackmailing person.

The rose lady.

When you are out at a club at night you have obviously had a few drinks and sometimes your defences weaken. You show some emotion and are prey for these damn flower ladies that approach you, especially when there is a girl with you.

“Excuse me would you like to buy a rose?”

“No thanks”

“But it’s for a good cause”

“Does it make Herschel girls less snobbish?”

“No you see I work for this kids home and we are currently trying to fund re constructive surgery for little Timmy”

“Why?”

“He was walking down Long Street in the city centre and was attacked by a gaggle of silverback apes”

It’s normally at this point that you are sitting there, wanting to punch this chick in the ovaries because you know you are sitting on your last ten bucks, which is going to go to this rose scam. That means you won’t be able to get that last drink, and this frustrates the life out of you.

There are Facebook groups dedicated to these ruthless animals, with names going something like “Mumble mumble the rose ladies coming”

Rose ladies: Miserable

Because you will notice as people see the devil arriving, they start intense conversations, so when she does walk past, they can brush her off and make out as though they are discusing the Kyoto Protocol.

“Yeah bud I would totally SMASH that chick over there!  I’m SO boozed…”

Guy looks over to see the rose peddlar coming. Changes his conversation:

“Yeah well we were trying to cross reference the hedge funds on the raging end of a bull market, when the anomalies were just dissected by the NASDAQ and the FTSE lost 10 points”

Rose lady walks by, missing this crowd:

“Sick I don’t think she saw us”

I mean, honestly Basil, who on God’s green earth is going to want to buy a rose at 11pm, when they are drunk out of their minds and just trying to pull some hot chick? What the hell are you going to do with a rose, IN A CLUB?

Where do you keep it? And the clubs that these rose ladies wrangle themselves into are not exactly the most romantic places anyway. We are talking about Obz, Claremont etc and so most people there don’t give a toss about being romantic. They just want to come right and a rose is not going to work. If anything a girl is going to be embarrassed by this.

Why don’t they sell useful stuff that we can use. Sell me a hot poker that I can stick in my eye. Sell me bricks. Sell me roofies.

But please don’t ever try to sell me a rose, because I will punch you.

I don’t care that little George has no arms and legs and no eyesight. And you know why I don’t care? Because little George is a made up fairytale!

I know how you operate. You walk in, looking for the weak. You zone around, looking to bite into their necks and suck the life out of them. You give some stupid story about how Johnny was born with a penis on his head and he needs surgery to remove it and attach it to the Asian kid who was born without a penis.

I know you. You’re like a spider mixing up a web of lies.

If I wanted to be a miracle worker, I would have been Mother Theresa.

But I want to be a raging alcoholic on a Friday night and I want to get some action from some hot model.

So please…

Leave me alone.

Sean Lloyd

Editor 

Cape Town is a very, shall we say, shallow city at times. Everyone is more concerned about their looks and what other people think of them, than anything else in the world. This is true for all of us probably. Maybe…I don’t know.

I remember when vida e caffe opened in Cape Town and suddenly everyone and their dog was drinking coffee. People who never drank coffee were going “No bru I can’t walk if I don’t have my triple screaming foaming skinny mocha choca latte with wings from vida e”

To me this was always a little bit over the top. It’s not that I don’t think vida e are brilliant, it’s just that I don’t think the untrained palette can taste the difference between vida e and Seattle. However, vida e were(are) clever and created a young lifestyle brand. Vida e became a part of people just like Levi’s and other famous brands have over the years. But because we are shallow, and don’t like to admit it, we would always say

“No I only go to vida because they make the best coffee. No I don’t go there to be seen”

Yeah, AND THE POPE IS JEWISH!

This is rubbish because before vida e you never complained about Seattle. However, all the models and fashionistas attached themselves to vida e and to reaffirm your coolness you had to drink coffee there. Because all the cool people were going there and if was the place to be seen. Whenever I go to Seattle I see an older crowd there, and they don’t seem to think the coffee leaves a bitter taste in their mouths.

The coffee trend has died down a little bit and suddenly none of my friends seem to want to “go for coffee” anymore. Honestly, from someone calling every day saying “Let’s go to vida for a coffee” I have had no calls of the sorts in months.

You see, your shallowness has now been replaced with sushi, this seasons hot ticket.

“Bru do you want to go out for sushi at Beluga? It’ll only cost you like R150″

“No I don’t want to go to Beluga for sushi, but I’d love to take your MOTHER Jenny out for a nice seafood dinner and then never call her again” I’m tempted to reply.

Again, it’s not attacking any coffee or sushi brand, or coffee the drink, or sushi the food, it’s attacking the shallowness of people. Just like Cape Town girls had the whole Gucci shades and Vuitton handbag craze a while back, it seems to have died. Jeez Louise, what next?

Well, SUSHI is it for the moment!

Sushi has been around for ages, but once people caught onto it and it’s worldwide “cool factor” it became all the rage. The best thing about it is the fact that people actually think it’s cheap.

Like R13 for a sliver of salmon wrapped in rice is value for money! Jesus, I can buy an entire bag of rice for R20! For an extra R20 the Chinese kid who farmed it gets thrown in as well. And the tiny piece of salmon is hardly worth much itself. People will complain that a burger these days at a place such as Gourmet Burger or Forres is around R50, but they will happily pay R30 for a “plate” of sushi. To those of you aware, a plate for R30 consists of a piece of salmon wrapped in rice, maybe with a bit of mayo and seaweed. My God, are we all on drugs? Are we smoking the crack pipe and taking ketamine?

“You WON’T believe it” people say, as though they have discovered that the petrol price has dropped to R1 a litre, “but I ate like 10 plates of sushi today and it only cost me R150, they having a special on at the moment. Normally that would cost me like over R200″

Well I will be damned, R200 to eat? I can buy a chunk of salmon for R100 and a bag of rice for R20 and make enough sushi to sink the Titanic.

“R35 bucks for that is cheap!” They say, all giddy. “Yeah but your moms still cheaper” I reply.

What are these “specials” actually on? A special for all the stupid people out there that think R150 for sticky rice and raw fish is cheap? Since when did R150 for this become “cheap” I will smash a steak for that price. I will smash you for that price.

What is sushi cheap compared to? Gold? Heidi Fleiss in her day? Brent crude oil? Kryptonite? A trip to the moon?

And since when has sushi suddenly appealed to all our taste buds? What is SO great about it that has everyone talking? I mean, what specifically gets people in a big wank fest about it? Is it the plain rice? Is it really the raw fish? Personally I think people just dig the mayonnaise. But then a chicken burger is also a bit shit if you don’t have that nice big piece of mayonnaise in the centre.

I enjoy sushi, but I’m not tempted to pay R150 for lunch just because it’s cool. What do I gain from this other than to advertise my wealth on Facebook by saying “Sean has just eaten himself sick on sushi at Beluga”

Do I really care? Does anyone really care? Why don’t people put their Facebook profiles as “Joanne just ate herself sick on burgers”?

You know why? It’s because burgers are not cool and they don’t boost your status. It’s not the “Cape Town thing” at the moment.

I mean, for the love of child slave labour, it’s RICE and RAW FISH. Come on, get over yourselves.

You see in Cape Town we always have new ways to guage our success. You were not cool or successful if you didn’t drink coffee. Now you are not cool or successful if you don’t shout your love of sushi form the rooftops.

It’s like in todays blogging world in South Africa, everyone is suddenly an “online marketing guru” or “tech geek” or my favourite, which I gathered from Shaun Oakes, everyone is a “Web 2.0 expert”

Come on guys, the only thing you’re an expert at is being a fully fledged idiot. Just as the blogging world has it’s “cool things”, so does the city of Cape Town.

Not that I’m immune from all this. After all I do live in a consumerism based society and we all have our flaws.

But come on, let’s get over the sushi before I blow a gasket here. Someone get me a quadruple gin and tonic before I overheat and die or at the very least go burn down every sushi bar in Cape Town.

Honestly, you don’t understand how the sushi craze makes me feel inside.

As a little side note here, just to do the whole Cape Town name dropping thing, the first time I NEVER tasted sushi was on a movie set called Ask the Dust. I was a stand in for Justin Kirk, and one day they started walking around on set offering everyone sushi and I was asking people why they were serving such shit food because I did not eat raw fish.

That turned out to be the blindest thing ever said as Colin Farrell’s stand in let me know that Colin had in fact bought that out of his own cash as a treat for everyone on set. Whether that was true or not I never found out, but it sure as hell wasn’t craft service that made it! Once again…you can take the boy out of Claremont, but you can’t take Claremont out of the boy. I’m pure class!

Sean Lloyd

Editor

We just heard that The Roundhouse Restaurant in Cape Town opened today. I’m pretty sure we will visit it somewhere along the line. This is just a short mention of it for the meantime, with a link to The Roundhouse Restaurant over HERE.

For reservation please call 072 277 2236 or e-mail [email protected]

Wooo hoooo another new place to eat and get drunk in Cape Town!

As if I need any encouragement…

Sean Lloyd

Editor

Remember when I spent some time in Epping a couple of weeks ago? Well I went back yesterday to find the Holy Grail!

Now it has taken us 23 years to find this. I was beginning to believe reports that it doesn’t even exist. Charlie V points right to the spot.

That looks delicious. I’ll eat there.

VICTORY! Apparently some American Medical Journal is coming to interview us later today.

We are like modern day treasure hunters.

Sean Lloyd

Editor