Circle Café
Where: Durban Jewish Centre, 44 KE Masinga Road, North Beach
Open: Monday to Thursday 8.30am-2pm, Friday 8.30am-2pm. Sunday 9am-4pm.
Call: 031 368 1766
The Poet and I visited the “Seeing Auschwitz” exhibition, currently running at the Durban Holocaust and Genocide centre. It’s a harrowing experience to see man’s cruelty to man in black and white, but it’s an exhibition we should all see.
I was brought up to believe it would never happen again. That we would not persecute just because someone was different, or had different customs, or even just that their mother dressed them funny.
But when you think about it, as South Africa was celebrating its freedom in 1994, hundreds or thousands were being butchered in Rwanda. The following year many more in Srebrenica. Today there’s ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, the Uyghurs in China, death in Palestine, and the onslaught on Ukraine by Russia. And that’s not to mention the latest law in Uganda criminalising ‒ under threat of death ‒ its LGBTQI community.
It’s a horrible thought.
After the exhibition, we retreated to the Garden of Remembrance where we enjoyed cappuccinos. The beverage is a little milky, but is so reassuringly comforting. The garden itself is a delight, a tiny space of solitude and peace in the midst of the big bustling city.
We relaxed and collected our thoughts.
Circle Café is kosher and runs a dairy kitchen, so there’s no meat on the menu, but salmon and tuna, and eggs certainly feature. There’s a small breakfast selection that includes a breakfast bagel with scrambled eggs, tomatoes, fried onions, mushrooms and cheese, as well as a selection of omelettes.
There are bagels, wraps or toasted sandwiches filled with the likes of avo and cream cheese, tuna mayonnaise, or avo and hard-boiled eggs. There are also loaded potatoes.
Lunch could include a few pastas, one with mushrooms and a cheesy option, there’s fish and chips and fish cakes and a selection of salads, and even a veg curry.
We opted for the tuna blinis, the traditional buckwheat pancakes often served with caviar, which were served with an Israeli salad (R110). Not quite what I was expecting, the pancakes had been rolled around a tuna mayonnaise mix and covered in a cheese sauce and gratinated under the grill. I was expecting little pancakes topped with tuna and maybe some cream cheese, garnished with some salad stuff or herbs. Despite the hot and cold elements to the dish, they were enjoyable, and the salad was nice and fresh.
We also enjoyed the potato latkes with smoked salmon, cream, cheese and avo (R130).
No trip to Circle Café would be complete without trying the cheesecake (R45), which is one of Durban’s best. Delicious-looking chocolate cake and carrot cake complete the picture.
I’m left wondering what the world would look like if people could simply share a meal together. What if Putin, Xi, Biden et al were to share a humble meal of borscht and varenyky (stuffed dumplings) served by a Ukrainian grandmother on her farm in the Donbas? Would they listen to her hopes and aspirations, for her family, village, country and the world?
One doesn’t know, but let’s each one of us keep the flickering flame of hope alive.
Food: 3½
Service: 3½
Ambience: 4
The bill: Came to just over R400 but included a number of deli items to take home.