Marcelino: passion and pastries

This bakery on Loop Street offers good value and Cape Town’s best croissants

Crisp, light and just a hint of sweetness. It’s nothing like the blob-of-butter type croissants that too often do the rounds in South Africa.

Making pastry the old fashioned artisan way is extremely time-consuming and therefore most of the croissants available in South Africa to date are made from factory pastry dough. Which explains why Europeans so often complain about the quality of our pastries. Well, not anymore. Not since Marcelino's bakery opened in Loop Street at the beginning of April.

“I’ve never tasted anything like it in Cape Town,” a regular customer beams.

Marcelino Siljeur has a passion for pastry making that started as a 17 year old apprentice. Under the careful guidance of Gert Zerban from Zerban’s fame he quickly understood that the pursuit of the perfect pastry is his reason for being.

The natural old-fashioned artisan way of baking 

Since then he has mixed and rolled out layers and layers of pastry dough and pursued the best 70% dark chocolate, Lübeck marzipan from Germany and laugan dip to glaze his pretzels. He further honed his skills as head pastry chef at the Cape Town Convention Centre as well as patissier on the QE2 cruise ship.

Not a hint of airs and graces, Marcelino himself is in the open plan kitchen making bread from 4am every morning, including sourdough, 66% rye and blackforest bread as well as baguettes and ciabattas. The bakery and coffee shop is open from 6am until 5pm during week days and 7am until 12 noon on weekends and public holidays. Although he often stays open a little later if there is a demand. Again, passion before all else. You will find Marcelino in the kitchen making sure the quality is consistent, or happily serving customers in his honest way.

Besides packets of biscotti, Florentines and other cookie favourites from around the world Marcelino’s also offer a great selection of cake slices (which is often on half price sale on Mondays) including Cheese Cake, Fruit Flans, Spanish Vanilla, Hollander Kirch, Swedish Apple Cake and Prinzregenten Torte. Cape Town’s German population would be especially delighted to find the rustic 2kg rye bread halves as well as freshly baked pretzels on offer. It’s nice to know that they also cater for weddings, functions and private parties.

A theatre kitchen, open plan and rustic

The simple lunch menu on the black board changes regularly and offers good value. Sandwiches with a choice of roasted veggies, cheese, cold meats and salads go for around R18 to R25. They also offer soup takeaways at R15 to R20 per portion. Prices are fair. Passion wins again. We’re proud of this born and bred Capetonian.

The focus is single minded. Production rather than interior decoration. 20 people work in this minimalistic open plan theatre bakery. At the moment the space offers only sparse seating that spills over onto the sidewalk. Yet soon the shop will be extended to include 120 square metres extra which will make for a more comfortable breakfast or lunch at the shop. In the meantime grabbing a coffee and a croissant (bagel, pretzel) on-the-go for only R12 will do.

“You won’t find a better croissant in Cape Town,’ says Marcelino confidently and I’d have to agree.

When it comes to croissants it will have to be a patisserie in Paris, or Marcelino’s in Cape Town, for me.

By Lize de Kock 

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Marcelino's Bakery 210 Loop Street | City Centre