So it’s Thursday… you don’t really have any plans, but you also know you need to get your butt off the couch, maybe grab something tasty to eat, explore a little and maybe even do a bit of socialising…  So where to go?  And what to do?  Hmmmmm…

Well, I might have an idea for you.   The City Bowl Food Market in Hope St is now also open on Thu evenings from 4pm to 8:30pm.  This means you can get your hands on all the delicious treats you would usually only get to drool over from 9am to 2pm on Saturdays.  Hell yeah!

I love the City Bowl Market, not only because it’s walking distance from my apartment, but also because they have a really good variety of ready-made dishes as well as things you can stock up your fridge and kitchen cupboards with, all vars van die plaas and all that good stuff.

I popped in there last Thu eve and was very happy to see that it was really buzzing with people.  The more people you have at a market, the better the market vibe, it’s a fact…
I first got myself an empanada from the Como stand.  Empanadas are these awesome little pastry half-moons filled with either a savoury meat or veg filling.  It is Argentinian in origin and appartently one of their most popular dishes.  These Como ones are the real deal because they are made with regte egte Argentine recipes which have been sourced straight from Buenos Aires.  Como btw means “I eat” in Spanish.  Me eats.  Me loves.

I went for the Caprese – Whole tomatoes, fresh basil and mozzarella and sweet potato – so yum!

Do yourselves a favour and hop on over to their website (the link above) because you can order frozen empanadas and have them delivered to your door for FREE (Cape Town only – but most areas are covered) AND you can pay cash on delivery.  So it’s very very easy.  They come in boxes of 12 (R150) or 24 (R300), but you can play around with different fillings as they come bagged 6 at a time.  So for a box of 12 you can select two fillings and for a box of 24 you can have up to 4 different fillings.  Mmmmm.

After that great little starter I hopped on over to the Drunken Tuscan stand to scoop up the last serving of their butternut risotto:

And how awesome are market prices… only R20 for a large serving.

I’m going through a major “risotto period” at the moment, kinda like Picasso’s blue period, but way tastier.   This risotto was certainly tasty, but I’ve recently been a bit spoilt with regards to risotto because I’ve sampled two which really blew me away.  The first was the mushroom risotto at Millhouse Kitchen and the second was the pea & mint risotto from Societi Bistro‘s Spring Menu.  I still scoffed this baby down with ease though.  That’s cause market food rocks.  Period.

Now obviously I’ve only showed you two things from the wide selection of dishes you can find at the market.  So best you go check it out for yourself and then tell me what your favourite item is.

xxx