La Perla shines like the Sea Point sun on a balmy day

An old friend was reminiscing about the very old days, when Emiliano Sandri held court at his original La Perla coffee bar in Waterkant Street, near the former Alhambra Theatre.

“He was such a character and the coffee was the best. He was a charming figure and he created a loyal nightly clientele. You just come in, your table is waiting, and by 5.30pm it’s packed. On occasion you’d order an entire crayfish with a sizeable tail. And a bib.”

Sandri left us recently having spent over 90 years on the planet, famously leaving Italy for Cape Town as a young man and turning into a legend of our dining scene.

The friend I’m referring to is Pieter Toerien, whose office was around the corner from that original La Perla in those days. This was the 1960s, and La Perla had been there since 1957, so Pieter must have been among the earliest regulars who is still with us today.

Sandri opened a bigger, more profound version of La Perla at the far end of Sea Point in 1969, and that it still stands there today is something Capetonians ought to cherish. And last Saturday, I was there, after many years away. It’s the latest stop in our quest to revisit the old classics of the Cape dining scene. Previously we’ve been to Nelson’s Eye, Magica Roma, and to the original Dias Tavern.

If the place had become a sad shadow of its original self – as a few voices, some of whose credibility I am sceptical of, have claimed – we would be right to be disappointed and regretful.

But the wonderful afternoon I spent there last weekend gave no evidence whatsoever of any deterioration or lack of care.

In fact, the place felt vital, and so much like it did back in the 1980s and 1990s that I grew happily nostalgic. And I’ve made a decision: I’m going to start going back whenever I can, and make it a part of my dining out life again. I’m almost ashamed that I drifted away.

While we’re in reminiscing mode, Pieter lived in Bakoven in those early days – I remember occasional parties at his home – and he remembers the extraordinary polymath that is Ben Dekker poaching kreef outside his beach cottage to sell to Emilano Sandri for the La Perla menu. Bekker is still with us and is 85, a quick Google search reveals. Environmentalist, actor, lumberman, everyman – as legends go, Big Ben Dekker is hard to beat.

But there are other legends in play at La Perla. Dhaya – as we all knew the restaurant’s famous veteran waiter – started as a waiter in 1969 and remained until 2005, but “Dempsey” (Demcy Arulnathan) has been there since the early 1980s, and holds the flag for the tradition of Durban waiters setting the service standards in a restaurant that still cannot be beaten for exceptional service.

Demcy has a name tag that spells his name Dempsey, which must be a sop to the likely fact that most people just presume that’s how it’s spelt. I did too. He told me that he was barely 20 when he spent R11 on a train ticket from Durban to Cape Town in 1975, climbed aboard a Sea Point bus and found himself at the Carousel, the former eatery right across the road. It is no longer there but back in the day it was the culmination of your walk along the promenade.

We’d leave Mouille Point and follow the coloured lights – red, yellow, blue, green, orange – that were strung from light pole to light pole the entire length of the promenade. They were standard globes, just like the white ones we still have today, but in all those colours. It was jaunty and wonderful. What would it take for the City authorities to bring that lovely aspect of the promenade back for us?

We’re the same age and both still working. I was 20 and the lead singer in a band at the time, and it was a year before I joined the Cape Times at the start of a career that hasn’t stopped. I’m only two months off my 50-year milestone, while revelling in my rejuvenated heart, being 7kg lighter, and my unlikely gym membership.

Our friend Theo treated us to lunch, and he has his habits when at La Perla. He ordered a La Perla Salad for the table to share, and this is a bright and fresh way to start a lingering late lunch. We started at 2pm and it was almost 4.30pm when we left. I eschewed all but a timid half glass of white wine, as I was driving, and we went on to a primi and a secondi in proper Italian tradition.

One way of judging how much a restaurant or its owner cares is to order a salad. Everything in the “La Perla Salad” was zingingly fresh. The opposite of this is maddeningly commonplace, right? A few bits of limp cucumber and squishy tomato plonked on top of enough tired old lettuce to feed an entire warren of rabbits and their cousins.

I could eat La Perla’s salad every day: batons of carrot and celery stand sentinel at the edges, guarding a mound of just enough supremely fresh lettuce, slices of perfect avocado, crunchy tomato wedges, topped with grated root vegetables, microherbs and dotted with black olives and cubes of creamy feta. Oh and it arrived deliciously dressed.

We had been sent complimentary nibbles of slim deep-fried battered strips of zucchini, and followed the salad with a portion of penne vodka shared three ways at Theo’s request.

We all loved it – absolutely loved it in its creamy tomato-based sauce with just the right hit of vodka – and agreed that we’d order this pasta classic again when we spot it on menus. It’s one I’ve generally avoided. Now I need to make it at home too.

I did think the quantity of penne vodka on each of our three plates was rather generous for one shared portion, but we weren’t complaining. I suspect they’d decided to spoil us a little.

There had been some discussion about what the three of us would order for a main course. The Foodie’s Wife wanted calamari, her favourite. But Theo and I both zeroed in on the same dish – veal saltimbocca.

Complicating matters was that I had asked Demcy earlier, before Theo arrived: If you could order one dish on this menu, what would it be?

Without hesitation he’d replied: the beef tagliata. He’d obviously had it before and there were no alternatives for him. It had to be tagliata. So I told Theo about this when he arrived.

There was a polite tug of war as Theo and I wrestled with the fact that we both wanted the tagliata but didn’t want to give up the saltimbocca, which we both love and haven’t had in ages.

And restaurant manager Ritesh Sewsunker had told us that La Perla recently reintroduced saltimbocca to the menu after it had disappeared for some years. There have been other deft menu adaptations as well, but I’ll get to those in future visits.

In the end, when it came to ordering our main courses, we both caved and insisted on having a full portion of saltimbocca each. Such is the power of this Italian classic.

And this was proper veal saltimbocca, not the dreaded abomination that parades as “chicken saltimbocca”, like an ugly sister trying to pass herself off as Cinderella at the ball. Horror upon horror.

Veal slices topped with prosciutto and sage and given just a hint of heat to draw out the warm cured flavours. With perfect cappellini (angel’s hair pasta) in a side dish.

So the tagliata was vanquished – for now – but that too will have its day in the Sea Point sunshine soon. After a walk full of memories and fresh air along that beloved promenade. DM

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Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award.

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