Skimming Stones | Sula's Blog | Sula1968 A South African poet, potter and mother
I have a thing about franchises, I’ll go to them now and then but they don’t give me the warm fuzzies. My feeling is that if you want to own a restaurant, coffee shop or pizza place, your spot should be unique and have something personal and special to offer. This must stem from my dream of owning a coffee shop, I have spent hours imagining what I would serve, how I would decorate and what would get people wanting to come back for more.
Generally I make my own pizza at home, we have pizza once a week as leftovers make for a good school lunch for Fjord the next day. The drawback with making my own is that I am left with the cleaning up, once in a while it is great to just chuck a cardboard box in the recycling bag and head for a book or the TV instead of spending forever in the kitchen. Previously when I bought take aways I would go to the franchise stores in my area but now that I have discovered Valentino’s and will stick with them.
The owner Joe is the main reason that I will keep going back, he has put his heart into the business and I respect that. Joe bought Valentino’s from the previous owner about 10 months ago. He previously owned Joe’s Place in Bryanston for about 21 years. His enthusiasm for his business is contagious. On my first visit he showed me pictures of the pizza’s which he had been experimenting with for a dessert option on his menu, on my most recent visit I noticed that he has settled on the strawberries and cream sweet pizza, although I have not yet sampled it, this sounds delicious. Joe’s menu has a good variety and several choices for my non-meat eating husband, there are a wide range of meaty pizza’s too for the carnivores among us. On Thursdays if you buy 2 large pizzas you get a free 2L coke.
Joe caters for a broad customer base from people popping in for a Take Away or sit down meal, to the after-work-and-need-a-beer folk, to a younger crowd who gather in the pub in the evenings. He even told me that it would be a good spot for my husband to watch the rugby on the TV there on a Saturday afternoon (we don’t have DSTV and Cliff loves rugby.)
Valentino’s Pizza Oven, Restaurant and Take Away is in Cinderella, Boksburg on the corner of Johnson & Killian Roads. They are in a rather scruffy looking little centre but well worth a visit.
Mmm a coffee shop, I would have loved a coffee shop like the one in the sitcom Frasier – a book shop come coffee shop in the days when book shops were still a thing. We have had dstv for only about 4 or 5 years, a waste of money in my opinion, still watching re-runs of Frasier and Will and Grace every few months. Valentinos sounds like a lovely place. From reading your blog, you would make an excellent coffee shop owner.
Maybe one day 🙂 My ideal location would be somewhere in the Karoo, the bookshop combo would be so perfect. Says she who is busy downloading the first Sherlock Holms book onto my e-reader, but nothing beats the sensory experience of a book in the hand. We watch whole series at a time and never have to wait a week to watch the next episode, A box set of a season of Seinfeld, x-files or whatever still works out way cheaper. The downfall is the sport, I love watching cricket but can’t exactly spend all day in a pub watching a game.
I really only watch Isidingo – I have a love hate relationship with that soapie and it is an addiction 🙂 which is SABC anyway and then all the sitcoms on Comedy Central, but they are repeats of repeats of repeated reruns. Don’t do sport at all. but I live in a male house so it is Jeremy Clarkson, cars, gold digging and storage wars it drives me insane.
Yes there is nothing like reading a real book, but sadly I think we are in the minority.