{"id":267,"date":"2005-12-10T13:45:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-10T19:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/?p=267"},"modified":"2005-12-10T13:45:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-10T19:45:00","slug":"cafe-melville-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/cafe-melville-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Cafe, Melville"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\"> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/56788416@N00\/72136560\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static.flickr.com\/34\/72136560_7ef7804d99_m.jpg?w=605\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0);\" \/><\/a><br \/><span style=\"margin-top: 0px;font-size:0;\" >  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/56788416@N00\/72136560\/\">2005-12-10 s at cafe (drawing by S)<\/a> <br \/> Originally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/56788416@N00\/\">royblumenthal<\/a>. <\/span><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:130%;\">Saturday, December 10, 2005<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Service: * * * 1\/2<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Food: * * * *<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Ambience: * * * 1\/2<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Babe Count: * * * * *<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:85%;\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Phone: +27 11 482 4309<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Address: 66 4th Avenue, Melville<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>S has just come back from boxing, and we&#8217;re hungry. But we&#8217;re tired of the same old places.<\/p>\n<p>Which makes me think of CAFE in Melville. It&#8217;s got a delightful porch, with comfie chairs.<\/p>\n<p>And even though we&#8217;re in the middle of a blazing summer here in Johannesburg, it&#8217;s damn chilly.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Look at that!&#8217; says S.<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s pointing at a blanket draped over each of the chairs on the porch.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Do you want the red one or the white one?&#8217; I ask.<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s wearing red today, so she chooses the red one.<\/p>\n<p>I order spicy Moroccan lamb stew with couscous, and she goes for the grilled salmon with steamed vegetables.<\/p>\n<p>The food arrives, and I&#8217;m happier than a lamb frolocking in a field. The plate is not overly large, and the portion is just the right size. (I&#8217;m very much against HUGE portions. They put me off. In this case, the amount is right. And I&#8217;m VERY hungry.)<\/p>\n<p>S takes a bite of her salmon. &#8216;Roy,&#8217; she says, &#8216;this is the best fish I&#8217;ve tasted in South Africa since I&#8217;ve been back from London.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>She spent about five years living in London. Now that she&#8217;s back, she&#8217;s already making waves in the musical theatre field. (Yes, yes, yes&#8230; I&#8217;m proud of her. So sue me for bragging, okay?)<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re both very puzzled about how quiet the place is. So I say to Raymond, the manager, &#8216;You guys really should be a lot busier than you are. Is it always like this?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>He says, &#8216;Today is out of the ordinary. We&#8217;re normally really bustling.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>I say, &#8216;Maybe it&#8217;s got something to do with this cold weather?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>S says, &#8216;This is the best meal I&#8217;ve had in months!&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>And then I take a snap of her on my phone, and she asks if she can do a self-portrait. Which she does. And that&#8217;s the pic I&#8217;ve used to illustrate this post. Talented gal, huh? She sings and dances and laughs too.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">Roy Blumenthal is a writer, director, artist, and <a href=\"http:\/\/snipurl.com\/visualfacilitator\">visual facilitator<\/a>. Hire him to make pictures of your meetings or workshops.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2005-12-10 s at cafe (drawing by S) Originally uploaded by royblumenthal. Saturday, December 10, 2005 Service: * * * 1\/2Food: * * * *Ambience: * * * 1\/2Babe Count: * * * * * Phone: +27 11 482 4309Address: 66 &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/cafe-melville-2\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Cafe, Melville<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p521FP-4j","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}