March 12, 2004
By Lucille Davie
FEEL it's about time to tickle your taste buds with different tastes? Take a trip to the western edge of the city, to Fordsburg, and try the eastern delights offered by several confectioneries and you may never go back to the usual donuts, Chelsea buns and koeksusters.
There're three confectioneries/coffee shops in Fordsburg that will get your mouth watering the moment you walk in. Their glass display counters are full of neatly arranged, creamy-looking biscuits, cakes, homemade sweets, delicious savouries and brightly coloured sweetmeats. You'll find it hard to choose but you certainly won't walk out empty-handed.
All bake the confectionery on the premises, so they're very fresh, and the prices are reasonable. They're all family businesses, with that attention to detail that only comes with a family business. All cater for large occasions like weddings and office lunches.
Divine Confectionery
Start with Divine Confectionery and Coffee Shop at 55 Mint Road. When you walk in you'll be struck by the fact that it's a beautiful building, previously a church. It retains its beautiful wooden A-shape roof. Rashid Ebrahim, the owner, inherited the building from his father, who bought it way back in 1970. He has recently renovated it, removing old rotting wooden pillars and replacing them with concrete pillars but he has had them painted in charming creeper shapes and colours, matching the green fascias, and contrasting with the mustard walls. It makes for a very congenial ambience.
Ebrahim used to own a bakery down the road, and brought his display counters over to Divine. He bakes all his confectionery in the building (he's closed off the altar section of the church for his kitchen), the speciality being garnache, a chocolate cake with hazelnut and cream; and taramissu, a cheese and coffee cake. He says people also come in for his chocolate surprise, a cream-based cake with chocolate flakes. These are his own recipes.
He has several tables scattered around and others upstairs in the gallery of the building. He serves breakfast all day but people mostly go elsewhere for a meal and stop off at Divine for coffee and something sweet.
"A lot of Indians rather buy a box of confectionery and take it home," he says.
That's just what I did. I had a small box of creamy-looking cookies and biscuits wrapped up. They were delicious - not too sweet, but melt-in-the-mouth.
His market is largely office people and families. He doesn't open weekday evenings, but opens weekend evenings.
Home Made Delights
Home Made Delights, around the corner at 81 Main Road, offers a delicious range of confectionery and home made sweets as well as a freshly-baked range of savoury delights.
I tried the naan, a collection of what looks like sweet buns stuck together, filled with spicy chicken. It was delicious. There's also a steak filling, or just plain, with no filling. There's a range of crossaint pies - steak, chicken, coconut and plain, that looked good. There's a pataria, a potato pie with delicate filo pastry.
There's a range of frozen savoury items: kebabs, mini pizzas, tortillas, mini-subs, mini spinach pies, flaky pies with steak, mutton, chicken, and vegetables.
Their confectionery looked superb: a baklava, a nutty, layered filo pastry, chocolate panache, banana puri, a banana pastry topped with syrup, a pecan tart, jam tarts and a twister, in coconut, dates and cocoa.
Some of the delights of Home Made Delights
I stayed clear of the sweets for fear of getting hooked but they looked great: carefully wrapped gold and silver parcels of chocolate almond bars, almond roccas, coconut brittle and chocolate mints.
Home Made Delights is also a family business. I spoke to son Mohammed Wadee, a young twenty-something running the shop, which he said had been operating from its present premises for the past 12 years. He said the business started years back with his mother cooking at home.
Delights will deliver, depending on what time of the day you place the order.
Shalimar Delights
Down the road is Shalimar Delights, at 228 Main Road, specialising in Muslim and Hindu sweetmeats, which make a colourful display in the glass counters, carefully arranged in stacks. There're different shapes: balls, blocks and small squares; and there's a range of colours: bright pinks and greens, rich browns and shades of cream.
I bought a box of different types, and am making my way through them, savouring the different tastes. They're certainly an acquired taste, some richer than others, but they're enjoyable.
The shop has lots of other interesting things displayed: boxes and packets of dried items like peas and rice. Bags of nuts, bottles of atchaar, chicken tikka - a feast for the eyes, and tummy.
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