January 12, 2025
Simplicity at the heart of good food
The Shop Café was full!
The restaurant is in a pretty setting — with most tables set outside under leafy trellises and an awning. Panic sets in when it rains though and covers have to be hastily crowded indoors. Proprietor Kerry Wall-ace was anxiously scanning the sky but promised us a table if we came back in an hour. In the event we were seated by 1 pm, just half an hour after we had arrived.
The Shop Café is essentially a whole food restaurant with an emphasis on healthy eating. Signa-ture is a vegetarian buffet. It’s a real spread and designed to be a complete meal for vegetarians but also caters for main course meat eaters wanting more conventional protein and two veg. Cost is US$10 for a small plate, US$15 for a large one. I am not sure how well this works as I saw several small plates piled volcanically and messily with everything on the buffet! Kerry would like to be able to serve each customer personally — and advise on combinations — but a buffet just doesn’t work like that. Also on the menu is tilapia, a chicken dish and the dish of the day (fillet steak the day we visited.) All US$18 including the help-yourself buffet.
The food is imaginative, varied and delicious. Always on offer are three hot dishes – our choices were cauliflower in cheese sauce, creamy potatoes and aubergine slices in a chickpea flour batter – meltingly soft and spiced with chillie.
Salads included roa-sted beetoot, chick peas, roasted tomatoes topp-ed with crème fraiche, coleslaw, three bean salad, lentils and leafy greens. All were served at Mediter-ranean room temperature, ideal for bringing out the flavours of good ingredients.
Kerry shops every day to source the best produce he can at the best price. He is conscious of food’s carbon footprint and sources local and organic as much as he can, though the convenience of outlets like Fruit and Veg City and the decline in the variety of local produce makes this more of a challenge. He is a big fan of locally farmed tilapia — describing them as one of the most eco-friendly fish we can eat. Other farmed fish are fed with ground up fishmeal — further perpetuating the cycle of marine destruction.
Everything is made on the premises from scratch including mayonnaise and the cakes and tarts. Feta and haloumi cheeses come from local artisanal producers and are delicious.
All meals are accompanied by complementary flavoured breads fresh baked daily in house and butter — and bottomless jugs of refreshing homemade lemonade.
The emphasis is on simplicity and pure ingredients and The Café is rewarded by a loyal customer base who return week after week to enjoy dishes they are unlikely to replicate at home. There is always something fresh and exciting and this is reflected too in the table decorations — a glass vase full of ‘bright lights’ swiss chard, a golden hubbard squash, and a quirky wooden waiter.
The coffee is good too and the cakes truly delicious. We sampled buttery carrot cake and sublime apple tartin.
It was a good start to my search for something special in 2011. The Shop Café has an easy, homely feel, excellent food and prompt and efficient service from engaging waiting staff.
The buffet lunch is available from 1230pm Tuesday to Friday and the café is open Saturdays for breakfast and lunch. Coffee, omelettes and the best toasted sandwiches in town are available weekday mornings.
