Welcome to an occasional blog series called “This Is the**East”, featuring hidden spots on Johannesburg’s East Rand. First up: the Croydon Bakery.
Some background:
A few weeks ago, a nice guy named Kevin presented me with a takeaway container of peri peri chicken livers from O’ Peri Peri in Edenvale. I had been expecting a small portion – maybe four or five livers – with some sauce and a few chips (fries) on the side.
I recently went to the Dinokeng Game Reserve for a quick, one-night media visit. Dinokeng opened officially in 2011 – pieced together from a bunch of private farms – and is the only free-roaming Big 5 game reserve in Gauteng province. (The Big 5 are lion, elephant, leopard, buffalo, and rhino.)
I can describe Sumting Fresh in one (not so) simple word: South-African-Asian-American-fried-chicken-street-food.
Really though, Sumting Fresh is hard to explain. It was once a food trailer in Midrand, then became a food truck, then a full-on food party bus feeding thousands of festival-goers, then a brick-and-morter restaurant in Norwood. (Also, the food bus is still going strong today.) Sumting Fresh serves creative and sophisticated cuisine in a casual, fun, almost-fast-food environment.
Nothing beats watching the sunset from a Joburg rooftop.
On Sunday evening, Mark Straw from the Joburg Photowalkers organized a rooftop mission for all of the photographers who contributed their pictures to the recent #JoziWalks weekend. We drove together to 120 End Street, a 26-story residential building in the middle of the CBD, and spent the evening taking pictures there.