Chai Yo and Jewel Tavern

Chai Yo Mowbray recently burnt down, but the enterprising owner set up shop a few doors down while the original shop is being rebuilt. The temporary digs have little to commend them, then again the original was also pretty workaday.  As a Thai restaurant, it may have been foolish to try the dim sum, but they had it on the menu and this food has been top of my mind for a while now. Chai Yo’s was very adequate. Not as good as I remember Haiku’s though. I then ate some chicken green curry – again tasty, if too sweet for my palate (as most local Thai places seem to make it) but with good basil flavour. I recently saw a Chai Yo in Durbanville and asked the Mowray owner if it was a franchise. Turns out that he has split from the franchise group that operate Simply Asia, Wangthai and Chai Yo – making the Mowbray Chai Yo the independent one but with the original name (confusingly). 

Jewel Tavern may be the Cape restaurant with the lowest decor bill. Up some dingy stairs into a view of a diseased smoking room, turn right and you are in a dining room with not even a few faded advertisements. But it’s popular for its “real” patina, and it is the Taiwanese sailor’s club in the harbour after all. The menu and the crew are the real deal, you may not want to peek into the kitchen though. So once more unto the dim sum. I did get the black vinegar (a deliciously complex flavour) but found the parcels average. The spring onion pancake that’s also on this menu is a greasy horror. The rest of the menu is classic Chinese and reassuringly free of description, the food is adequate and well-priced, and the bill comes in Oriental numerals. I’ll be back to try some of the more exotic menu items sometime – but probably not in a hurry.

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