African Breese

A quaint little shop filled with goodies from South Africa and England.
Finding a needle in a hack stack is an easier feat than finding South African goods in Vancouver. So when I came across this little shop on W. 4^th, I was very excited.
If you’re hoping to stack up your kitchen cupboards with goods from aboard, this is not the place. It has a limited selection of items and as with most imports, they can be on the pricey side. However, if you are looking for a few specialty items that are not common in regular Canadian stores then it’s worth the visit.
This shop has become my go to place for «rusks», which are South African tea biscuits. I notice that they also have biltong but I have yet to try it since it doesn’t look like the biltong from South Africa that I’m used to and usually my arms are full, trying to carry as many boxes of rusks as I can.

I was really shocked when I went into African Breese today asking about preserves that I remembered from childhood and was treated so rudely by the gentleman behind the counter. As the only person that in the store I didn’t think that it would be very taxing for him to answer my question, but clearly I was wrong. After asking whether they ever carried the item I was rudely asked «Is that even South African?!?» to which I answered «Yes my father used to bring it back for me when he went home to Cape Town» and was rudely answer «No, we don’t carry things that don’t sell», fair enough as a business owner that makes sense. But also if they carried it they could sell it, to me and my family but whatever that’s probably not enough to warrant bringing an item in, I get it. What I couldn’t really understand is why a simple «No sorry we don’t carry that» or «I’ve never heard of that before, maybe I could look into it» or a just a «No». But to make a customer feel terrible for having the audacity to ask a question about your place of business seems a little bit off. Treating someone who’s in your store and wants to buy things as a inconvenience doesn’t really make sense to me. So I guess they don’t need to bring in anything they don’t want to, and I don’t need to support their business, neither do any of my friends or family.

Really fantastic destination for house made jerky. Look for the three bins to the right of the cash register. I find that it’s best to just say, «Can you give me one bag of each type totalling about $ 10 for all three.»

Absolutely love this place. Other than biltong, droëwors and chili bites, they also stock their shelves with a lot of other popular foods missed from the motherland. Things like boerewors, pap (maize) and Aromat are among my favorites. The owner is super friendly and helpful. Only thing I wish it that they could have been located closer to downtown.

African Breese is the 2^nd branch of their flagship store which opened in North Vancouver. It specializes in South African import foods, not least including rusks, biltong, Dairy Milk chocolates (which I recall as being super popular in Australia, too) and certain dried sausages which name escape me. The store was reasonably priced ($ 4 for some nice passionfruit juice), the décor and the service were nice (the guy was friendly and the whole store had a nice wood veneer which gave it a homy feel), but there was insufficient description of various items. They kind of set out a lot of foods and I guess expect you to ask the cashier what they are if you have questions… but what if the cashier’s busy?
Anyway, the food isn’t really up my alley. But it’s a nice addition to the neighborhood — a neat little space near UBC to pick up some more indigenous food. Apparently they also have ugali, which is a maize dish they consider a staple, which I remember having a form of in Ghana called banku. It’s definitely interesting and exotic (though not really something I’d go out of my way to have again), so for those adventurous in their global food concepts, this store may be for finding some interesting items!