Piesang needs a place!

We’ve been enjoying serving you so much every Saturday at the Biscuit Mill that we’d now like to expand to a few more days of the week! So Piesang is currently on the lookout for a space in Cape Town where we can open a small café and food store, so that we can offer the fresh tastes of tropical Asia from Monday to Friday. We’re currently scouring Cape Town for an available spot, so keep checking back with us. We hope you’ll join us once we’ve finally found somewhere to move in!

Where to eat Piesang.

If you’re curious to try the tropic Asian flavours of Piesang, come check us out on Saturdays from 9 to 3 at the Neighbourgoods Market at the Biscuit Mill. We start the day offering breakfasts from Taipei and Bangkok—like Dan Bin, rolled Chinese pancakes filled with egg, spring onion, cheese, and soy sauce. Later, we move into a light lunch menu, offering street-food snacks and curries from around Southeast Asia. Our most popular item is our salad rolls: rice paper wrapped around fresh vegetables and herbs, filled with chicken, noodles, or grilled beef.

We’re currently looking into more markets, and are also available for catering and event planning.

Hope to see you at the markets!

Piesang at the Neighbourgoods Market.

Come visit Piesang at the Neighbourgoods Market!

After much planning and preparation, Piesang will finally begin trading in Cape Town! We’ll be setting up this Saturday, April 25th (and every Saturday after), at the Neighbourgoods Market. Held at the Old Biscuit Mill on Albert Road in Salt River. The Neighbourgoods Market is a thriving complex where you can shop for local designs and handcrafted foods. It’s also the hottest place to be on a Saturday in Cape Town, and always draws a mixed crowd of families, tourists, and the hip and trendy.

Piesang will be operating from a stall in the prepared foods courtyard, toward the back of the food market. Breakfast will start at 9:00, with warm dishes like dan bin (rolled Taiwanese pancakes) and binh my op la (baguettes filled with eggs, Vietnamese ham, and fresh cilantro). Then from 11:00 to 14:00, we’ll be moving in to our Southeast Asia spanning lunch menu, featuring fresh salads, rolls, and baguette sandwiches.

So come by, order some lunch, or just say hi. We’ll be looking forward to seeing you there!

Piesang Story.

The men behind Piesang are Bordeaux Martin and Alexander Santillanes. The two met in Cape Town in 2006, while both were studying (Bordeaux: fashion design, Alexander: Anthropology). When Alexander’s student visa ran out, the two made a plan to stay together: they’d go to Southeast Asia.

For the next year and a half, they traveled through the region, spending time among the skyscrapers of Bangkok, the cosmopolitan avenues of Phnom Penh, and following the river Mekong from sleepy Lao villages to vibrant Saigon. They relaxed on secluded Lao Liang Island, and shopped among the alleys of colorful Colonial Penang. Along the way, they developed a strong taste and curiosity for the foods of the region.

Before, they had always experienced the food served in Thai and Vietnamese restaurants as a slightly spicier extension of Chinese food: noodles or rice stir-fried in a wok, with a little syrupy soy sauce and a chili or two. But in Southeast Asia, they found the food to be so much more than that. The food they encountered was complexly textured, flavored with nuance, and always made as fresh as possible.

They worked various jobs during their time in Asia: teaching English in Bangkok, photographing in Phuket, tutoring in Taiwan, travel-writing in Central Vietnam, seeking out strange and delicious dishes along the way. They sampled avocado shakes at a seaside market in Hualien, river fish spring rolls in the Mekong Delta, chicken curry steamed in a banana leaf in the mountains of Northern Thailand. They also developed a distinct fondness for the hip cafes of Bangkok and Siem Reap, where delicious Asian food was served alongside decadent desserts in stylish surrounds. But it was in the coffeehouses of Hanoi, over glasses of rich Vietnamese drip coffee, that they made their decision: they were going to bring this food with them when they left.

With Piesang, Bordeaux and Alexander hope to introduce a wider range of tropical Asian flavors to Cape Town: one that extends far beyond the safe borders of phat thai and deep fried spring rolls; one committed to authentic ingredients, like fish sauce and dried shrimp; that includes unusual textures, like steamed curries and all meat larb salads; one that is as unusual, unexpected, and delicious as the food of Southeast Asia.