Food Lovers Market, Claremont, October 1st

My month starts with shopping at Mr Price in Cavendish, where I buy a shirt that I love for R20. Gray messages me as I’m paying and asks, “Do you want to do el cheapo breakfast before heading to campus?”
I hardly ever say no to Gray or to food, so there we sit at Food Lovers Market, Claremont. I’m getting breakfast and a new item of clothing for under R50 – it leads me to wonder, am I poor?
“Am I poor?” I ask Gray.
“Your top’s from Paul Smith.” He replies, and puts on his Marc Jacobs sunglasses, and that conversation is over.

As we wait for our orange juice (not included in the price of the breakfast, although a coffee is), Gray’s friend Gaby calls. He looks apologetic, but I don’t mind: Gaby’s my favourite of Gray’s friends, and I know I’ll enjoy hearing stories and observations from her rich and cynical life after he puts down the phone. I take the time to take a look at the décor, and I’m quite impressed. It’s nothing out of the ordinary, but is definitely more restaurant than market, which is a relief.

“What’s up with Gaby?” I ask.
“She wants me to go to Rocking the Daisies with her.” He says, and shakes his head. Last month he took a trip to Earthdance with his ex-girlfriend Farrah (that was a long time ago) and her self-proclaimed Fabulous and Eccentric Friends, and it seems that this has exhausted his patience for music festivals, fabulousness, and eccentricity, for the time being at least. For now, he’d just like his breakfast.

They say you get what you pay for. When our food arrives, we see Food Lover’s Market’s R25 breakfasts, unfortunately, are no exception to this rule. I’m a difficult person to please when it comes to breakfast, I’ll admit. I don’t like grilled tomato. I avoid sausages if at all possible. I’m squeamish when it comes to eggs generally, so Gray, my mother, and Cheyne of Cheyne’s on Bree Street are the only people whose scrambled eggs don’t make my stomach churn. I need hard fried eggs and bacon crispy enough to crack and crumble into bits. Streaky bacon is far preferable to back bacon. With all of this in mind, I try to give restaurants some leeway at the first meal of the day by allowing them to get something or other wrong, and the fact that the bacon isn’t as crispy as I’d have liked and needs to be sent back doesn’t bother me too much. I’m enjoying my orange juice and the sunshine, and I smile when Gray says for perhaps the nineteenth time since September first,
“Now this is it. This is really the beginning of summer.”
For at least the nineteenth time I agree,
“It definitely is. It won’t get cold again now. Winter’s over.”
When my breakfast comes back, we start our meals. The bacon is fine, but when I stab at my egg it’s the kind of sloppy that makes me either ill or irritable, and today I go for the latter.
“Calm down, Madison.” Gray says in warning as I walk over to the counter to complain about the fact that no-one seems to be able to get the overcooking of my food right. I don’t like my name, and Gray knows this, so I know he’s pretty serious if he uses it. I’m very civil, and the waiter responds in kind, never losing his patience.

The rest of the faults of the meal don’t deserve narration, so here they are in list format: grilled tomato sloppily cut and undercooked, toast underdone, cutlery remaining in the kitchen when the meal returned to the table the second time.
My advice? Stop in at Food Lover’s Market for one of their generously sized and well-priced takeaway pizza slices or a healthy take-away option from the salad bar, but don’t bother to hang around.