Pay R49 for two servings of beef lasagne with chips or salad and two fruit juices at Le Petit Café, valued at R100 (Save 51%)

When the clock strikes noon, there’s always that risk that you might get that twitchy feeling; the one where you know that if you don’t fill up that lasagne-sized void you might just curl up in the foetal position and howl like a lonely wolverine.  Instead of embarrassing yourself and in turn getting excluded from the annual Christmas party, get your insatiable self down to Le Petit Café for two servings of beef lasagne and two fruit juices for R49.

Just like there’s no rest for the wicked, there’s no solution for lasagne addicts except to clamp their jaws around a massive serving of cheesy creamy meaty goodness.  Le Petit Café welcomes the hungry like they would survivors of an air-balloon malfunction; with care, understanding and a delicious plate of pasta.  Allow the friendly and proficient waiters of this delightful coffee shop seat you somewhere cosy while they fetch you a glass of freshly-squeezed juice to still your rumbling tum.  While you’re there, hands clasped around your juice, enjoy the quaint and charming décor of the orange-hued café and relax in the knowledge that soon you shall be fed, and oh what a feast it shall be. 

It’s a part of urban coffee shop legend that when Le Petit Café’s chef first tasted his lasagne, he cried with joy, flew out the window and proclaimed the dish to be Bloemfontein’s finest culinary achievement.  Years later, the dish is still causing a stir – the main reason behind le Petit Café’s sound proof kitchen and sturdy windows.  The moral of this memoir is that this is one of the most melt-in-your-mouth-delicious dishes in the Free State and with the highest quality ingredients and most meticulous preparation – you’re in for a treat of cheesy proportions. 

Food-lover fact: When a young Henry VIII fell off his horse behind the royal stables, he told his court that he was visited by a forest elf who told him that he would recover faster if he ate mountains of funnel cake and pasta; hence his sudden dramatic increase in weight.