Coffee.co.za: Odd Café, Greenside

"Life's delicious" says the sign outside this coffee shop and restaurant in Greenside.

It's exactly the sort of affirmation I'm looking for on this fresh spring morning. So I park myself cheerfully outside on the pavement at one of their plain wooden tables with its little sprigs of flowers in demure vases.

This is a charming bistro, with old-fashioned wooden doors and fittings and a welcoming spirit. But apart from a clutch of healthy-looking men in cycling shorts, I am the only patron. An old Billy Joel track plays from the speakers and I feel a bit alone and out of place. Clearly, the rest of Greenside is sleeping or elsewhere.

Then the coffee arrives - a delicious small cappuccino served with a pert little biscotti - and I am young again and life is full of promise. The cappuccino is so good that I have another immediately. Yet another cyclist saunters in. This is plainly not a coffee shop for the early-bird wi-fi heads with laptops. But it's spring and it doesn't matter, does it? Nah. What matters is that the wi-fi is too fiddly. Two bits of paper and some uncertainty on my part as to where the code should go . I'm tempted to order an avocado milkshake to change the mood. But instead I persist to the strains of Billy Joel . A bottle of red, a bottle of white. I'll be back for a meal and a bottle. It will be much more fun than the lonesome coffee.

• Odd Café, 116 Greenway Greenside, 011-486 3631, www.oddcafe.co.za.
• Cappuccino R15;
• espresso R14,
• filter R15.
• Parking is on the street ,which can get busy at peak hours but is pretty easy before 10am when the rest of Greenside seems to still be in bed.

Coffee rating: ****

Wi-fi rating: **