Mick’s / Nick’s Pie Cart outside the old Durban Station on Pine Street (now Monty Naicker Street) was a genuine late-night Durban landmark.
It sat right in front of the main station entrance on the Pine Street side. During the day the parking bays were used by the big red SAR&H Pullman buses that ran to Pietermaritzburg and the South Coast. Once those buses left for the night, the pie cart rolled into the same spot.
What it was like
- It looked like an oversized shoe-box or caravan, tethered to a lamp-post so it could draw electricity for the big old fridge and the lights.
- At night the side walls/shutters dropped down to form counters/shelves at elbow height. Customers stood outside, elbows on the counter, while the staff worked inside.
- Inside: a large old fridge at one end, a big coal stove (remembered as a Welcome Dover) at the other. Staff often worked in vests because of the heat.
- Opening hours were late — roughly from around 11 pm into the early hours — perfect for railway shunters finishing night shifts, club-goers, and anyone needing proper late-night or early-morning food when almost nothing else was open.
The menu (classic, no-frills, gravy-heavy)
Favourites included:
- Sausage, egg, mash and gravy
- Pie and gravy
- Chips, pie and gravy
- Other variations on the same theme
- Slice of white bread
- “Famous MPC tea” (sweet)
It was pure working-class / night-owl fuel — hot, filling, and available when the rest of town had shut.
People who were there in the 1950s–1970s still talk about the atmosphere: the mix of railway men in their black waistcoats and caps, the occasional rowdy late-night crowd, the smell of the food, the lino floor, and the simple satisfaction of standing at that counter at 2 a.m. with a plate of something hot and a mug of tea.
It has long since disappeared (the old station building itself is still there and now houses the Tourist Junction), but it remains one of those little pieces of old Durban that people remember with real affection. The kind of place that only made sense if you’d been out late or just finished a long shift and needed something solid before heading home.
If you have a specific memory of it — a particular night, a favourite order, or anything else — I’d love to hear it. Those stories are the best part of remembering places like this.
