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Blue Waters Café, Port Elizabeth

by Jeanne Horak on September 13, 2010 5 Comments in South Africa restaurants

BlueWaters © J Horak-Druiff 2010

I love my hometown of Port Elizabeth dearly, but one of its strong points has never been customer loyalty.  Other than the odd exception (Barneys, De Kelder and Old Austria spring to mind), restaurants have come and gone as regularly as the weather changes – and anybody who has been to PE will know that the weather changes multiple times per day!  A place that is flavour of the month one minute, with a waiting list as long as your arm, suddenly gets dropped by the trendsetters and is as empty as a nudist’s wardrobe.  A place that survives substantially unchanged for a decade or more and still pulls the crowds is a relative rarity.

Blue Waters Café (the small building almost exactly at the centre of the photograph above) did not start off its life as a restaurant.  Or rather, it did – but as a very different restaurant.  Back in about 1993 or so, the space started out its life as Cadillac Jack’s Rock & Roll Diner, an American 1950s themed diner where the menu included such American classics as buffalo wings, TexMex nachos and Cajun chicken salads.  On Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights, after dinner service was done, there would also be themed 1950s music and a dancing in the bar area, with the highlight being the barmen and waitresses dancing on the bar counter at one point in the evening.  Unlike most dancing destinations, it attracted a crowd of twentysomethings and older, rather than teenagers, and for a while it was a winning formula.  And then the owners decided to run it as a restaurant by day and a nightclub and bar by night, and do away with the exclusively 1950s music – and it was still a pretty good formula.  it certainly worked on me:  I do believe I spent most of my nighttime hours in the early to mid-90s on the Cadillac Jack’s premises!  But then the owners decided to import local legend Mr Shakes as a DJ and a whole new crowd of far younger and edgier patrons arrived, alienating the crowd that had made the place successful in the first place.  Not long after that, there was a stabbing and it did no take long for the place to unravel and close down. RIP.

BluewatersView

But the location of the venue was too good to resist and it was not long before another restaurant opened in its place in the mid-90s:  Blue Waters Café, which is still going strong today.  The venue is quite spectacular – a first-floor room with wraparound floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the sparkly Indian Ocean in Algoa Bay and over Shark Rock Pier (see picture above).  Decor is understated and does not distract from the view, and there is an attractive bar at one end of the room, should you want to pop in just for one of their excellent cocktails.

The menu is the kind of menu that mid-range South African restaurants do so well and that you so seldom find outside South Africa – in other words steak/seafood/pasta menus, where nothing is an obvious weak point.  The restaurant is open from early until late and you can kick the day off there with breakfast – anything from a healthy breakfast of fresh fruit and muesli to decadent scrambled eggs with smoked salmon.  My favourite meal to have there is lunch, when you can enjoy the best of both worlds: the menu and the view.  The a la carte menu can provide you with something as light as tramezzini (try the divine spinach, feta and bacon one) through salads and pastas, all the way to seafood (think kingklip, prawn & chicken curry, and sole), chicken, and meat (including venison Stroganoff, lamb shank and various excellent steaks).

BluewatersSalads

My favourite salad (pictured on the right above) was always the crab, feta and avocado salad, primarily because they used chunks of crab meat, rather than crabsticks.  However, the seasonal fluctuations in the quality and availability of avocados sadly seems to have prompted them to take this off the menu.  As an alternative, I’d suggest the also-delicious smoked salmon and asparagus salad.  On the left is an old stalwart that I still love – the Cajun chicken salad, where spicy chicken strips top a crispy salad full of so much more than just lettuce.  Apart from the generous portions, the other nice thing about Blue Waters salads is that they routinely serve the dressing on the side, without having to he asked.

BluewatersCalamari

When it comes to main courses, there is only one thing that I always crave and order:  calamari florentine.  While most places in South Africa will serve you battered calamari rings, it is less usual to find calamari steak on the menu.  Ordering it can be a bit nerve-wracking, as it might arrive as soft as butter, or it may be so rubbery you could re-tread your tyres with it.  Rest assured, the calamari steak at Blue Waters Café is firmly in the former category, and it comes topped with a creamy spinach, feta and mushroom topping which I find irresistable.

Prices range between about R30-R55 for starters and about R50-R110 (with some premium steak and seafood dishes costing more).  The wine list is fairly brief and springs no real surprises, but prices are not crazy.  Service is usually pleasant and attentive and you can’t go wrong with their cocktails priced at just over R30 each.  Blue Waters used to be one of my favourite lunch venues when I lived in PE and I still make a point of paying a visit each time I am in town, whether for a cocktail or a meal.   The food is consistently good, the view is always lovely – and if they have survived in my fickle town this long, clearly they are doing something right!

Café Blue Waters
The Boardwalk Shop 7
Shark Rock Pier
Marine Drive
Port Elizabeth

Tel.: +27 41 583 4110
Fax.: +27 41 583 4408
E-mail:
bluewaters@iafrica.com

 

And don’t forget to get your barbecue and braai recipes to me by 23 September for the Braai, the Beloved Country event to celebrate South Africa’s Heritage Day this month!

BTBL logo

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  1. nina says

    September 14, 2010 at 9:57 pm

    Ai hoe verlang ek nou PE toe!!! Had so many meals there!!!

    Reply
  2. Firefly says

    September 16, 2010 at 7:39 am

    I remember Cadilac Jacks. Those where the days when Einsteins were still downstairs under Barney’s. Bringing back memories. I agree with your statement about PE restaurants. They come and go way too quickly.

    Reply
  3. Tint says

    September 17, 2010 at 2:38 pm

    They always said CB stands for ‘come back’. I want to go home so badly now, I can taste it. Speaking of taste… those photos have me hungry. I’m going to hunt down something to eat.

    Reply
  4. Sally D says

    December 29, 2010 at 4:37 pm

    Hi Jeanne
    Thanks for the tip – we were there this morning for breakfast. Not so sparkly out to sea but the vibe indoors was warm and friendly as you’d expect in PE.
    The service was just beginning to feel slow – though very polite! – when the manager came over, apologising to my DH and explaining that his eggs hadn’t been cooked right for sunny side, she would like the kitchen to start over with them but it would take a bit longer. And this in a very busy restaurant, holiday season in full swing!
    We thought that was great, a real commitment to excellence. When the eggs arrived they were perfectly done and with a lovely deep orange yolk, a top of the range egg~! In her place I think I’d have dished them up as is and waited to see if the customer complained – that’s what any other restaurant would have done. So 10/10 to them . My croissant was also delicious. Next time we’ll hope for slightly deeper pockets so that we can enjoy some of the other delicious offerings.

    Reply
  5. Ramon Thomas says

    July 19, 2011 at 6:21 pm

    Who is the owner of Blue Water Cafe? I want to host the next #PETweetup there in August 2011.

    Reply
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Jeanne Horak is a freelance food and travel writer; recipe developer and photographer. South African by birth and Londoner by choice, Jeanne has been writing about food and travel on Cooksister since 2004. She is a popular speaker on food photography and writing has also contributed articles, recipes and photos to a number of online and print publications. Jeanne has also worked with a number of destination marketers to promote their city or region. Please get in touch to work with her Read More…

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