Cafe Sofi in Gardens, Cape Town, celebrates its first anniversary with a two-month polka dot party honouring Sophia Electra, the woman who inspired the café.
From one October to 30 November 2026, polka dots appear on the café's exterior, walls, floors and even toilet doors. A special menu featuring dishes and cocktails matching the theme is part of the celebration.
Natasha and Savva Sideris, founders of the Tashas Group, created Cafe Sofi as a love letter to their mother, Sophia. Her eclectic favourites included cats, cakes, orchids, leopard print, the Pink Panther and polka dots.
She pressed flowers, wore red lipstick and baked birthday cakes that her children can still describe in detail. Midnight snacks and the music of Lata Mangeshkar were also among her loves.
"Polka dots have been subtly woven into Cafe Sofi's design since opening," says Savva, co-founder and managing director of the Tashas Group. "For its first anniversary, we decided not to be so subtle."
A special menu
The café's food and beverage teams have created a special polka dot menu for the celebration. It is available daily from 12:00 until late.
Six cocktails are named after friends and neighbours in the area. Among them are Rowdy, Ballo, Custodian, Rosey & Vittori and Pauline's. This way, the community of which Cafe Sofi has become part during its first year is also included in the celebration.
Visitors help decorate
Each table receives a stack of blank paper circles and a marker pen with which guests of all ages can design their own polka dots.
The circles are then added to the café's décor, so the display grows with visitors' contributions throughout October and November.
Natasha, chief executive and co-founder of the Tashas Group, says the idea fits a restaurant built around memories, personality and the small details of their mother's life.
"A polka dot is a small thing to remember someone by. But so too is the exact shade of a lipstick, or what a cake looked like before someone cut into it," she says.
Cafe Sofi is at 2 Park Road in Gardens, Cape Town. The anniversary celebration runs until 30 November 2026. The family-friendly café is open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
This article is an automatic English translation of a Nuusflits article originally published in Afrikaans. Read the Afrikaans original.
