After presenting to you two of Cape Town’s leading roasters in my previous posts – check Origin Coffee Roasting and Truth Coffee – no overview of the mother city’s best coffee bars would be complete without including Deluxe Coffeeworks. And before you protest and say: “But what about XXX and YYY?”, don’t worry. I got them all lined up too. Well, most of them.
I first came across Deluxe while adjusting to my new South African environments in Stellenbosch, where my friends and I headed right after landing in this gorgeous country. I didn’t realize that they had not one but two outlets in the small university city northeast of Cape Town, so stumbling upon them at De Warenmarkt during a casual city stroll was a wonderful surprise.
But it wasn’t until my very last day in South Africa that I got to visit Deluxe’s roastery in the city bowl, which was a nice way to end my holiday and brought the total number of Deluxe outlets that I visited along the way to four. Located on Buitenkant street, the roastery is a casual affair that combines great hospitality, a passion for coffee and a sense of rock ‘n roll into one. Expect beards and tattoos and funky decor for days.
The roastery offers a nice porch from where to engage in excellent people watching and sip on perfectly prepared coffees such as their slightly unusual cold brew cocktail that comes with regular and condensed milk. Other than that, they recommend to drink all of their coffees black but if you insist, there is full fat milk only. No alternative milks on offer here. One might argue that position but each to their own. I’m merely here to tell you where to go get great coffee, right?
In the nine years since Deluxe Coffeeworks was founded by Carl Wessel and Judd Francis Nicolay, the brand has opened a number of shops in Cape Town, two in Stellenbosch and is currently in the process of opening its first brand in neighbouring Namibia. Nowadays, you can also drink their coffees at other cafés all over the nation.
The roastery might be a bit off the beaten track if you’re not necessarily in the neighbourhood, but it’s definitely a good alternative to Truth, which is just down the road and often very packed. At Deluxe you can just pull up a stool and watch capetonian life go by.
