A Table in the Corner

In this episode of A Table in the Corner, I chat to Bérengère Cristini, (Beran to her friends) founder of Thirteen Ice Cream, a Cape Town ice cream maker supplying restaurants, chefs and specialist food retailers. Originally from Burgundy, Beran trained as a chef in France, working in professional kitchens in Paris and Monaco before moving into pastry and food production. He came to Cape Town in 2...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I chat to Pamela Shippel-Granoth, the cook, teacher and restaurateur behind Fynkos at Kirstenbosch Gardens in Cape Town. Pamela has spent almost 50 years working with food, beginning with home cooking and small-scale catering before moving into cookery teaching, recipe development, radio and food writing.  We trace her career from those early days through...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I chat to Justin Joubert of Southern Cross Seafood Deli , the Cape Town fishmonger and seafood supplier established by his father, Paul, in 2007. Justin joined the family business after working as a chef for eight years, bringing kitchen experience to a business that sits between fishermen, suppliers, restaurants and home cooks.  We talk about the realiti...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I chat to chef Carla Burger about Bloem, the restaurant she co-owns with Bertus Basson at Paul Clüver Family Wines in Elgin. We talk about Carla’s journey through the Basson kitchens, from Overture and Eike to Spek & Bone and Chorus, and the move from pastry chef to running her own restaurant. Carla explains why Bloem was conceived as a more relaxed,...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I chat to Mike Fuller, co-owner and operator of Spek & Bone in Stellenbosch, as the restaurant approaches its tenth anniversary. We talk about Mike’s journey through the Bertus Basson kitchens and how that experience shaped the way he approaches food, wine and the business of running a restaurant. He explains how Spek & Bone has evolved from its o...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I chat to chef Anouchka Horn about Buri, the new 25-square-metre fast food banger she's opened with Neil Swart in Harrington Street. The concept is simple: take the South African boerewors roll and give it the same attention - to ingredients, sourcing and detail - that the Belly team brings to menus in their other restaurants. We talk about developin...

In this bonus episode of A Table in the Corner , Jonathan Warncke and I chat to chef Ivor Jones at Chefs Warehouse Beau Constantia, shortly before we sit down to eat his winter menu. Ivor has just returned from an intensive five-week trip, including three weeks in Thailand studying regional Thai cooking, and we talk about what he brought back with him. We get into the difference between Thai food...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I chat to Don Albert, the person behind The Voyager, a new boutique hotel in Piketberg. Designed and built by Don and his partner Reece, it is the latest iteration of a concept that Don first developed in Bali, built around hospitality, food and cultural exchange. We talk about why Piketberg made sense after a decade spent looking for the right place to b...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I chat to Giovanni Calvani of Datterino, a Roman-style cafeteria and pizzeria in Cape Town’s New Riverlands Mall. Giovanni grew up in Italy and has brought a very different style of pizza to Cape Town: pinza romana , an oval-shaped pizza made with a highly hydrated dough, long fermentation and a blend of flours. We talk about why his original pizza al tag...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I chat to Elaine Rousseau of Food Fanatics and Homestead Venue about a career in hospitality that began almost by accident and has grown into catering, events, mentoring and community food projects. Elaine traces her journey from learning the trade at the Swartland Hotel and working at Paddagang Restaurant in Tulbagh, to starting Food Fanatics in 1998. We...

What keeps a restaurant running and the dishes seamlessly appearing on tables? You seldom bump into a chef pushing a trolley around a supermarket shopping for the next service, so how do the ingredients get into their kitchens? In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I chat to Richard Kershaw, co-founder of Kerston Foods, which has quietly stocked the pantry of Cape Town's hospitality indu...

If you think you know Cape Town's food scene, this conversation might make you think again. In this episode of A Table in the Corner, I sit down with Dennis Molewa, founder of Unexplored Cape Town, whose work takes visitors beyond the city's celebrated restaurants into the cafés, markets and neighbourhood kitchens where many of the city's brown and immigrant communities eat every da...

This episode of A Table in the Corner is another in our Pizza Sessions series, supported by  Banhoek Chilli Oil . So naturally, I arrived at Novo Pizza + Wine with a box of Banhoek under my arm, ready to talk pizza with owners Ammy and Arno, and to discover why so many Capetonians had told me, "You have to put Novo on your list."  Novo Pizza + Wine is a neighbourhood pizzeria in Mowbray...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner, I sit down with chef Clara Bubenzer, co-owner of The Lebanese Bakery, a certified halaal bakery and deli with branches in Claremont and Cape Town's East City. Clara trained in fine dining kitchens before finding her way into Middle Eastern food through a career that took her from Cairo to Jack Black Brewing Co., before an unexpected opportunity led he...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , brought to you with the kind collaboration of Kirston Foods, I chat to Tim Wyatt-Gunning, co-founder of Vadivelu, the contemporary South African Indian restaurant on Cape Town's Kloof Street. With a background in banking, telecommunications and technology, Tim's move into hospitality was unexpected. Together with his brother-in-law, chef Jason M...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner, I chat to Brad Berman, the founder of Pizzasaurus, a vegan pizzeria on Cape Town's Harrington Street that sees every pizza served as a small moment of activism. For Brad, plant-based cooking isn't about sacrifice or preaching. It's about proving that food can be indulgent, deeply satisfying and a little kinder to the planet at the same time....

In this episode of A Table in the Corner, I sit down with chef Jaycee Ferreira of East City Grill & Yakiniku in Cape Town’s growing Harrington Street precinct. We explore why so many chefs are drawn to Japan, and how a trip to Tokyo opened JayCee’s eyes to a side of Japanese food culture far beyond sushi. We talk about his journey into hospitality, the challenge of combining a steakhouse and a...

Born in San Pellegrino Terme and arriving in Cape Town with his South African partner in 2011, Diego Milesi talks about building Ferdinando’s from a tiny pop-up operation in the Cape Quarter into a loud, chaotic, deeply loved community institution in Observatory. This conversation goes far beyond toppings and dough. We get into the roots of Neapolitan pizza, the obsession with fermentation and hyd...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I sit down with Henning Klopper, co-founder of Zuney Burger, to explore how a small farm-to-fork burger business from the Eastern Cape grew into one of Cape Town's most talked-about restaurant brands, and my absolute favourite burger. Fresh off recognition from Time Out as one of the world's best burger restaurants and a place on the 101 World&a...

Welcome to my audio podcast companion to The Pizza Sessions - a Banhoek Chilli Oil partner series where we explore the people, ingredients and craftsmanship behind some of Cape Town's best pizzas. In this episode I chat to James Williams and Tando Bavuma of Pizza Shed. The two friends built a backyard COVID project into one of the city's most-loved pizzerias, and we talk about their appr...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I sit down with restaurateur and entrepreneur Nic Haarhoff, best known as the founder of El Burro and the fun-and-funky trimmed down taquerias in Greenpont and Tamboerskloof. He’s an operator I admire, and predictably our chat soon digs deeper than tacos and tequila.  Nic reflects on the evolution of Cape Town’s restaurant scene over the past fifteen year...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I sit down with chef and restaurateur Liam Tomlin. It was supposed to be a chat about the milestone ten years of Chef’s Warehouse at Beau Constantia, but we leapt into meatier matters. I also discovered that Thali is ten this year too, having opened within weeks of Beau. What follows is less a conversation about individual restaurants and more a look at t...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , the tables are turned as I sit down with my friend, collaborator and occasional culinary guinea pig, Jonathan Warncke. Best known as chairman of the South African Podcasters Guild, Jonathan has recently stepped into the food world as my co-host on Table for Two , our new YouTube series exploring some of Cape Town’s most interesting restaurants.  We talk a...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I sit down with restaurateur Ricky Simon, the driving force behind Cape Town favourites Three Wise Monkeys, Una Más and the soon-to-opened Ora in Sea Point. Ricky grew up in the restaurant business. His father introduced the Mongolian barbecue concept to South Africa in the late 1980s, and some of Ricky’s earliest memories are of restaurant kitchens, dini...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner , I sit down with charcutier Richard Bosman to talk about Hunt & Gather, the new biltong project he has developed with Jerome Gluckman. Richard has spent years working with cured meats, preservation and the science behind flavour. With Hunt & Gather, he turns that knowledge towards one of South Africa’s most iconic foods, asking what biltong might l...