Ratios are off at #TheDogsBollocks by @yard_ct, among other issues. 3/4 thru my burger of beef and on an increasingly desperate prowl for #satisfactioninabite, I excavated the patty from its oversized bun and deluge of sauce, revealing it to be insipid, thin and a disenchantingly uniform grey. Irritated that I had consumed so much sauce before isolating this foundational flaw, I recognized the Blues on loud as a bit disingenuous, the space's branding strident and contextually insensitive. The toilet is labeled "brick shit house," the servers are cute white girls (encouraged, I presume, to foster their uniform of bandana-wearing tough Americana and referred to on the establishment's Facebook as bitches) and the kitchen is staffed by black men, a dynamic ubiquitous in #CapeTownrestaurants. This toilet, though, embedded alongside a division of labor indicative of the wealth gap persisting, even widening, in post-apartheid South Africa, is rotten. The men in the kitchen, if they are like most of the black South Africans working in kitchens throughout the City Bowl, will commute home to townships where indoor toilets are scarce and protest over sanitation conditions occur hebdomadally. I will not go back because the burgers were not very nice and because the space's cultivated "character" is an exercise in privilege, reinforcing the status quo which allows #CapeTown's wealthy to remain comfortable, dabbling in the Blues, legacy of slavery in the American South that it is, and charmed by the brashness of calling the toilet a shit house. (Photo not mine, snagged straight off the book.) (at The Dogs Bollocks)