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The #Trending team went to Social Parkwood in Rosebank to experience their take on an upmarket shebeen ... it didn't go over well.
Social Parkwood
Corner Bolton Road and Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood
Located in the popular Bolton Road strip, Social Parkwood has fashioned itself as a sort of up-market shebeen, complete with Tshisha Nyama for 2 (R390) and amasi marinated S’african Fried Chicken (R135) on the menu.
Problematic? Most certainly, but who’s got time to be woke when you’re getting drunk?
The cocktail menu is extensive and features a handy guide that shows you which of the selections are sweet, which are spicy, which are tart and so forth. Quite cool, if you ask me.
Unfortunately, I ordered the nachos, which cost R115, came on a tin plate and just really, really sucked. But Charl will enlighten you more on those. ...-- – Grethe Kemp
A shebeen in Rosebank is just not a shebeen, bra. I ordered the lamb shank paired with biltong pap and chakalaka (R210). Being a young Zulu lad, I’ve been eating pap forever, but never with little bits of biltong mixed into it. It wasn’t too bad, but then they had to give the pap a fancy shape. Go ahead and miss me with that. I’m still young in the game, so I go easy on owners and chefs. But watch out, my patience for nouveau riche Afro cuisine is wearing thin. ...-- – Phumlani S Langa
I have some of those tin plates and bowls at home, but they don’t get used much since bae moved in. See, bae, who was raised in relative poverty in a township, doesn’t understand why he would want to have the plates, symbols of his poverty, glamourised as fashionable by some white folks. I get where bae is coming from and I gotta say, Social, your poverty porn décor was almost as offensive as your nachos.
As a vegetarian I don’t eat out much in Joburg because I am tired of being that bitchy critic. You can be sure you’re going to be offered full starch, such as pasta, pizza and nachos, as the main option. But let them be the most delicious nachos then. Not this, this dry old pile of store-bought chips with a shortage of avo and a kind of industrial-yellow cheese that got nuked so that it was sticking to the bottom of the rusty tin plate. At least the avo fritter starter was less toxic.
But why would you deep-fry avocado? It’s a creamy blob in the middle of a greasy blob and it left me queasy. I’m going to be nice and offer one star here. .----– Charl Blignaut
