Breakfast at Lola's Cafe on Cape Town's Long Street

If you need to take it easy the morning after - veg out at Lola's on Long Street

The search for the perfect breakfast spot is not unlike searching for your perfect life partner.

You need to have chemistry, a vibe that lets you know you’ve made the right choice, excitement, something that encourages you to try new things so you don’t get bored of having the same old conversations every day.

Most importantly, you need to have things in common – shared interests that will keep you coming back for more. Lola’s Café on Long Street ticks all these boxes.

Lola’s is known as a Veggie hang out. The eatery’s vast vegetarian menu has made it a firm favourite amongst those who crave something more substantial than the simple salad or vegetable lasagne found under the vegetarian options on most restaurant menus.

Lola’s is for Veggies who crave a little excitement in their meals. If it’s excitement you crave, breakfast at Lola’s on Long Street is the perfect Cape Town breakfast spot for you.

The vegetarian restaurant’s breakfast menu offers the same variety that a good meat-eater menu would, and more. Offering everything from fruit to fry-ups, you are bound to find something to suit your appetite.

Having invited along a staunch meat-eater, who likes his bacon with a side of toast, I was a bit sceptical of finding something on the menu to suit us both, but the options were more than generous.

We decided to go for the classic French toast with fried banana and syrup and fruit smoothies to wash it all down. Lola’s generous portions and humble presentation will have you feeling like you are eating breakfast in your own kitchen – if your kitchen has close to 13 tables and is always filled with Long Street shoppers and creative types.

I’d like to think of myself of somewhat of a French toast connoisseur and can safely say that Lola’s French toast is the perfect mix of traditional cooking and quirky afro-centric flair. While it may not have been the best French toast I’d ever had, the ‘just like mom would’ve made it’ look and taste meant that it hit just the right spot.

But the star of this breakfast show was definitely the fruit smoothie. Made from fresh fruit and super-good-for-you ingredients, their strawberry and yoghurt and tropical fruit smoothies are better than the best you’ve ever tasted. Breakfast for two came to just over R90 and left us both feeling adequately stuffed.

Lola’s Cafe on Long Street is bold in every way; from its ballsy posters to its bright green, blue and orange stripped walls the quirky eatery makes no excuses for what it is and who it caters for.

This Long Street restaurant is filled with what seems like a mish-mash of 50s kitchen décor and modern vintage chic. it appears the owner went to a garage sale and brought back with whatever he could find, but when you look closer it becomes clear that Lola’s, and it’s décor, is all about the people who eat there.

The old school metal-trimmed soda shop counter, the afro-centric beats that pump through the speakers, the 1950s steel lino covered kitchen tables, and the ultra-modern plastic bubble-like chairs speak to the creative types who love it so much.

A poster hanging above the entrance to the kitchen says it all; two boisterous old ladies, smoking and playing pool, defiantly stand in front of a sign that reads “You have to be 18 to play.”

Lola’s is about breaking the rules, being different and celebrating that difference. If you are looking for prim and proper Lola’s is not the place for you ... but that’s what makes it so great.

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