A Table in the Corner

Vusi Ndlovu is the mind behind Mlilo at the Time Out Market, Cape Town. His journey to All Star chef began in hotel kitchens and grew through his time at the Greenhouse with Chef Peter Tempelhoff and later at The Saxon with Chef David Higgs. He's also been staging abroad and was a regular on the global culinary competition circuit. With partner Absie Pantshwa, he created Edge to explore his t...

With a sparkling track record which includes some banging cocktail bars in New York, Tetsuo Hasegawa has brought his brand of precisely crafted cocktails to Cape Town. Anthm Bar in Loop Street is an intimate 35-seater with a fabulous small plate menu where local ingredients and global techniques are explored in both drinks and food. We sat down for an excellent chat about his journey from Japan to...

Crush! online magazine is a digital food publication that started documenting food and food people in Cape Town way back in 2008. I sat down for a natter with founder, publisher and general creative head Matthew Ibbotson, and while food was at the core of the discussion, it was also about media, publishing and the effect the restaurant scene had and continues to have on the global media scene. Rea...

Pop-ups fascinate me. I’m interested in the business model - how they work, and the benefits or challenges they present for operators. I’ve seen and heard a lot about Not Sad Food Co. so I reached out to Claudia Alberti for a chat about how (and why) she and her partner Yoraya Nydoo run pop-ups and kitchen takeovers. They’ve developed a fun, funky food brand, free of the constraints of walls and a...

Limoncello in Gardens was once my favourite neighbourhood eatery. It was always buzzing and fun, the pizzas were fantastic - in fact everything on the menu was. Then it closed. Limoncello became a beautiful food truck for a while and now it’s a much-loved local in Noordhoek. I sat down with owner and chef Luca Castiglione to talk about his food journey and food trucks, then I nearly made him cry w...

Motherdough was started by Lance Littlefield and his partner Willem van Schalkwyk during lockdown as a source of advice, equipment and a reliable starter for people caught up in the craze of baking sourdough bread. Lance's starter 'Alfonsina' is over a century old and comes from Piedmont in Italy. He's been her care-giver for over 25 years. When the world started returning to n...

Ryan Shell is a lekker oke. He kindly and very graciously jumped into the gap when the original Ryan booked for this slot was suddenly called away on family business. It was a serendipitous moment though, as Ryan Shell of Ōku restaurant has been on my target list of people to interview for a while. He's a very capable operator who creates happy teams and runs great restaurants and his perspec...

Chef Craig Cormack is completely obsessed with salt. It began when he started reading Mark Kurlansky's brilliant book, 'Salt: A World History' and began a journey into a rich and global culinary past. It has seen him develop entire menus based on the salts of the world, the wines of the Western Cape and recipes that have been knocking around for a couple of thousand years. He has a...

PJ Vadas once worked for Gordon Ramsay, so he swears a bit. He's also a really clever and successful restaurateur who has an easy and fun approach to what he does. Vadas Smokehouse at Spier Wine Estate is a fabulous place to visit - modelled loosely on Texas BBQ, but with a distinct local signature that PJ can't help stamping on anything he does. We had a great chat and touched on fishin...

Heleen Meyer is a Cape Town-based food consultant who works across a wide range of disciplines to service companies in the broader food sphere. From recipe development to writing, styling and photography to video content production, she tells stories about food across a range of platforms. The former Sarie Magazine staffer has built a career advising and creating for corporates mainly in the fresh...

Clarke's Bar & Dining Room is an enduring favourite daytime spot for me. It's a cool, easy spot for a coffee, breakfast or a solo lunch. If I lived in the city, I'd probably prop up their counter on many nights too. Their burgers haunt my dreams, although anything you care to order at that counter is likely to be perfectly executed and delicious. On this episode, I chatted to Ly...

At the water's edge, amid the bustle of a working harbour, Chef Ryan Cole has opened a gorgeous little restaurant simply called COY. While the location is in the heart of the V&A Waterfront, midway between Time Out Market and The Cape Grace, it is also aloof. Isolated from the foot traffic and bustle of the precinct, unassuming but beautiful, COY sits at the entrance to Robinson Dry Dock,...

Lindile Ndzaba is a young man I admire tremendously. He has built a wine brand with nothing but an idea and his drive to do something extraordinary in his community. Khayelitsha's Finest Wines started as a project to bring decent wine to his neighbours 'elokshini', in the sprawling township of Khayelitsha outside Cape Town. Working in the city, exposed to fine wines in his role as a...

I initially reached out to Tania Olivier of ATE Eatery when she posted online about working on a cookbook. I've been wanting to talk about cookbooks on the show for a while. Turns out her publishing project is another thing entirely, but we started talking about South African food and how she cooks her experiences of being South African for guests in her home. Tania is fascinating and such an...

There are such wildly conflicting views about salt, and the seasoning of food. Depending on where you look or who you ask, salt is either beneficial for your health or an ogre to banish from the table. Years ago I read a fascinating book on salt, and it's role in human history, by Mark Kurlansky, so I'm a bit of a salt geek. I found another one, Samantha Skyring, who owns Oryx Salt and w...

I read a fantastic article in Daily Maverick by Kit Heathcock about Zuney Burgers in Kloof Street. It also touched on the wagyu industry and an interesting trend in farm-to-consumer eateries that are popping up. I have an abiding love for burgers, have written about them and eaten probably more than my fair share. I reached out to Kit to strike up a conversation about her story and burgers in gene...

Chef Liam Tomlin is about to open a revamped Chefs Warehouse & Canteen at 91 Bree Street in the CBD along with Chef David Schneider. Also in that gorgeous old building, they're opening Merchant - a restaurant dedicated to the suppliers and producers of fine local ingredients. I've been waiting for a chance and a reason to sit down with Liam Tomlin for a chat. And while we did discuss...

One of the joys of running our restaurant 'The Table at de Meye' was my regular visits to Dalewood nearby to collect cheese for the weekend menu. I've always loved their cheeses - especially the 'Huegenot'. Theirs is a singular farming philosophy which has attracted global attention and numerous awards. All their cheese is made with milk from a herd of Jersey cows pastured...

Regular listeners will have picked up my abiding interest in the 'regenerative agriculture' movement. While science is teaching us more and more about the world and providing the tools to understand it better, it seems we are returning to more traditional ways of producing food. This is true of the great undertaking that is Babylonstoren, where natural farming methods lead and very cleve...

Babylonstoren is a fascinating project that has grown immensely since I last visited. There is just so much going on there. The return to mixed farming, the use of regenerative farming techniques in the fields and beds is incredible. There's so much happening, that the content couldn't be limited to just one episode. In the first of a couple of chats with key people on the farm, I spoke...

Following on from a couple of conversations about the nitty-gritty of running restaurants, I called on a couple of my favourite local operators to get their view of the world. Kenneth McClarty has been running Olympia Café in Kalk Bay since 1997, so he knows something about keeping a ship afloat. Charmaine Lilje of Chardonnay Deli is a spring chicken by comparison, but the accumulative experience...

El Burro holds a place in many Capetonian hearts. The Tacquerias are doing great, but Nic and Rene Haarhoff decided a few years ago that managing big 150-seater restaurants demanded too much time and energy that they should be investing into raising their two sons. The big El Burros - especially the Greenpoint one - are sorely missed by many, but the ethos of hand-making everything from scratch an...

Despite his youthful good looks , Richard Key knocks the oats out of anyone else I know for restaurant industry wisdom and knowledge. Whenever we see each other, the topic turns to 'the game' immediately. He knows so much, and I've leaned often on his knowledge to sense-check ideas for projects I've worked on. As much as he and his wife Gillian love restaurants and the hospital...

Readers of Daily Maverick who read the lifestyle content, especially the food section edited by Tony Jackman, will recognise my guest on this episode from her byline. An American who's lived in Cape Town for 30 years, Ilana Sharlin Stone is a great food writer whose portfolio includes work for Saveur , Life and Thyme ,  Los Angeles Times , and many others. After starting out as a writer, Ilan...

Much of the content on this show is focused on established restaurants and other food businesses or their proprietors. Ever since I chatted to Chef Pete Ayub way back on Episode 17, I've been thinking about chatting to a young person who's just getting going in the industry. Debs Ayub very kindly talked one of the students at Sense of Taste Chef School into chatting to me on the show. Me...