Sasol Garage, Jan Smuts Drive, under iconic Marble Restaurant
The garage forecourt space has been hotly contested and gaining in prestige and popularity over the years, but nothing quite like this!
If you think you're lucky that your local supermarket has paired with your local petrol station, you ain't seen nothing yet, unless you live around Rosebank, where Pantry has quickly become your go-to for, well, pretty much everything you need on the way home after work, after a night out, on the way to a friend's party, a pick me up in the morning...
Their tagline, 'Fancy, but Easy' oozes out of every pore of the beautifully curated space and it is bustling.
We popped in on a random Thursday afternoon to find freshly baked loaves of Marble Focaccia being whisked to the shelves, the pizza oven working wood-fired magic, a queue for coffee, a patisserie counter filled with ornate looking treats, a section of gifts and crockery and decor and cookware that I immediately felt I need in my life and an entire grocery store of best of brand products. Yes. This is at a petrol station.
Ok, so we're the Coffee Magazine, so let's skip back to that part about coffee!
Shew, what a lovely set-up. Linda and Inoch were so warm and welcoming! The stunning Nuova Simonelli Aurelia Wave UX and Victoria Arduino Mythos II grinder are working hard.
"This place is SO busy! It's unbelievable!" Inoch tells me with a smile.
He made us a delicious flat white and cortado using the single origin medium dark roast Honduras in the hopper, a collaboration from Rock & Roller and Morrico. Perfect drinking temperature and delightful latte art to boot.
Conveniently, as everything is designed in this space, you can pay for your purchases at the separate stations, so if you're popping in for just coffee you can pay then and there, same goes for each section of the store, rather than heading to the tellers as in a traditional garage forecourt. It's a complete aside, but the touch screen payment/ordering portals have glitter frames, which I'm not gonna lie, I just loved!
Overall, it was a fabulous experience and are not surprised at all by what an instant hit it has become. Well done to the team involved.
