It’s surprisingly hard to find a good, cheap curry in Cape Town. SA Blog is on the case! Click on our cheap curries tag for more hot eats.
The Wembley Roadhouse
23 Belgravia Road (cnr. Denchworth)
Belgravia, Athlone, Cape Town | Map
Specialty: Delicious Indian take-out.
Contact: Tel: +27 (0) 21 697 1435
SA Blog recommends a look inside? Don’t miss it!
Further Insight & Opinion
Quite simply, The Wembley is the center of the culinary universe of take-aways in Cape Town. A veritable Belgravia Road, Athlone landmark (Athlone is Cape Town’s largest “Coloured” suburb), it’s run by the enterprising Gangreker family - right next door to their butcher shop, bakery, “markette” and travel agency.
The Wembley is a classic roadhouse. The beauty of a roadhouse, of course, is that you don’t really take the food away, but merely over to your car, parked nearby, and gobble the delicious, piping hot food, which steams up your windscreen, as you watch the ebb and flow of the crowd around the take-away counter.
You can actually wait in your car for a waiter to appear at the window - he will take your order, dash off, and return with your food on a tray - or you can just step up underneath the awning - don’t be shy to push to the front - and order your meal from one of several harried-looking women who front the engine of the operation, the noisy, organised chaos of the kitchen. Note the colour of the post-it note which your order is written on: the pink or yellow or green scrap will disappear into the chaos, then resurface in 10-15 minutes next to foil-wrapped lumps, which is your delicious food.
To see what the roadhouse looks like from the inside, check out the 2002 video, Starbucks, which the really bad British band A shot in Cape Town. The Wembley was sacrilegiously transformed into a generic fast food joint for the shoot, and features throughout. See the video at Rock-Sound.net, among other sites. If only there were as many Wembleys as there are Starbucks in the world!
This piece originally ran, in edited form, in the 1 Nov 2005 Cape Times (”Review”). It is reprinted with permission.
Subscribe
|
Print
|
Share             
|
EARLI IN DA A.M… LATE N DA EVE….A GOOD SNACK FROM WEMBLEY WIL LEEV U TREMBLIN…
FANTASTIC FOOD. TRY THE LASAGNE MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
I am the local doctor in Wellington. A group of people bought rotis and curry at this take-away on Sunday 13/08/2006. In the early hours of Monday morning I was urgently summoned to attend to two people who ate your food, a old man of 78 and a school kid, who had to be attended to. I am deeply stressed that this happened - is there no quality control in your kitchen?
These farm people work hard for their money to go on outings to CT.
Dr L Pretorius