Pauline’s began in 2018. Its founders opened Loading Bay in 2007 and ran it for eleven years as a meeting ground for farmers, friends and neighbours. From there came SANS Community in Sea Point, a food brand built on nutrient-dense, regeneratively farmed ingredients, and from SANS the need for a daily café. Pauline’s is named after a grandmother figure whose presence stands for comfort and home, and the aim is a room where you are always welcome.
It works only with specialty coffee, chosen from crops where slower production and careful processing come before yield, so that growers are paid fairly. On the bar there is a classic coffee for milk drinks and a progressive bean option, black coffee as espresso or long black, batch brew, iced coffee and a cold brew slow-dripped through iced water for eight hours, with raw farm milk, oat or almond milk. Chai, turmeric and hojicha lattes sit beside them.
The bakery grew from a sourdough starter fed at home fourteen years ago and now bakes with regeneratively grown grain, farm butter from regenerative dairies, whole cardamom, organic unrefined cane sugar and eggs from regenerative farms. The eatery menu runs from poached eggs on sourdough to miso butter mushrooms and smoked trout.
Pauline’s has three cafés in Cape Town: Sea Point, Green Point and Park Road in Gardens.
Photograph: Pauline's