Leafy Cafe: From grass on pitch to grass on table

The search for this unusual place started after a morning of absolute random reading. The 0-2 scoreline of a three-Test series makes you avoid sports pages. Not out of depression, but plain boredom.

It was an online write-up under the ‘trending’ section of City Press, a hyper-local paper. It was about a restaurant, but it wasn’t exactly a food review. The headline was enticing or, as millennials say, click-baitish.

‘We tried out the marijuana cafe at Sandton’. Of course, you want to know more.

It’s the kind of ‘good news’ that gets shared even before it is read. Though, caution is advised. The proximity of “Friends”, “Family” and “Front page” groups on the chat window has its pitfalls. Those “sorry-wrong-window” situations can be embarrassing.

As you read on, you know you have stumbled upon a goldmine. Even for a non-smoker and someone barely active on social media, this was precious information.

Besides, the serious stoners, the ‘I didn’t inhale’ types too will consider this as the ‘find of the tour’. You had stumbled upon a place that was a dream destination for every Facebook flaunter, instagram show-off and wannabe cool. Who would want to miss the pleasure of making your school friends and college mates envious! While you sit in your cubicle, here I am at this Leafy cafe on the Highway. In your face, you frontbencher!

So you call a friend, and proceed to the place. It’s in Sandton, but it is more like Sandsterdam. (That’s picked from the heavily scribbled walls of the Cafe).

But for the very tall bouncer outside — not exaggerating he could have touched the over-head electric wires by stretching his hand — the Cafe looks inviting. The porch has thick natural foliage. There is a sprawling backyard with comfortable huts with tables and more trees. Maybe, this happens to be the only place in the neighbourhood that doesn’t even have an electric fence or tall walls.

Just above the front door you are reminded about marijuana’s medicinal values. That very recognised doctors’ logo — an ancient Greek staff getting kissed by with two entwined slick serpents — has a ribbon of a yellow leaf.

A few steps inside and staring at you from the walls of the café are the house rules. The most noticeable being ‘No drugs’. The Rule No.1 is ‘Please take a seat and wait to be served’.

You follow the rule and wait. But for the ‘whiff’, it looks like just another Saturday afternoon at a Johannesburg café, or anywhere in the world. There’s a pool table, Arsenal is playing on television and ‘Wenger Out’ is hand-written on the adjacent wall.

The crowd hasn’t started building. There’s a not-so-young couple, probably from the flower power decade. There are a couple of white boys with thick brown beards. The showstoppers, without doubt, are a group of elegant, heavily jewelled and lightly dressed black youngsters. Some are wearing bandanas, some have head bands. All they needed was tall models and they could have easily stepped inside the television that’s playing MTV.

The smooth-as-velvet table is both functional and informative. It reminds you of your chemistry books. It’s a period table with different elements. On it is written the Marijuana Table, with symbols and names of the different weeds. So Ni isn’t Nickel, here it’s Nirvana Special. Au and Ag remain neighbours but Gold and Silver on this planet are called Acapulco Gold and Afghan. Cu is not for Copper, it’s Couchlock. Zn equals Zen not Zinc. Cn: Cinderalla 99 aka Copernicium. Pb: Purple Buddha aka Lead. Si: Silver Haze aka Silicon. Pd: Purple Diesel aka Palladium. Pt: Purple Trainwreck aka Platinum. Ds — Durban Poison (Darmstadtium). And finally, the Indian contribution. Hg is not Mercury, here it stands for Himalaya Gold.

Soon, you are being served. The man at the table wears a chunky neck piece, holds a lighted cigarette and is fanning a photocopied menu card. He has a question that gets regularly asked at most Indian restaurants here. “Strong, medium or light,” he says. There are suggestions too: “This will make you think.” My friend wants to think. In a record of sorts for most cafes, the order arrives, neatly packed in a tiny polythene bag, the kind in which homeopaths give tiny sugar balls. You can have it there, or prefer takeaway.

We leave after a while not keen to eat the tasty looking pizzas and muffins. The locals aren’t too clear about the law. Some say it’s legal, others aren’t so sure. After a wave to the eight-foot-something guard and a failed high five, you are out. The Leafy Café is behind, what lies ahead is the Highway.