A Table in the Corner

Chef Ollie Swart loves to cook and he really, truly loves feeding people. He even went out and got us cheese & ham croissants from Foxcroft to scoff during our chat. Ollie's Instagram Profile is a thing of pure joy - full of a happy, enthusiastic young chef enjoying the hell out of creating and sharing food. His more than 45k followers are testament to the infectious nature of his love fo...

Catherine Haddad was recently appointed as FoH manager at the iconic Bao Down restaurant. We chatted about the service industry, and making your way as a server - the hours, the work. Mostly however, we chatted about her side-hustle. Catherine makes the most delicious dumplings. Her little cottage industry operates from the tiny kitchen of her City Bowl flat and everything - pastry to filling - is...

The menu at Ember & Oak on Constantia Uitsig is a fantastic mix of globally inspired dishes prepared over live fires or in a charcoal oven. It's particularly enjoyable because Chef Tim Picks creations are served in a very casual, laid-back atmosphere, but the cooking is impeccable. I sat down to chat with Tim about his journey through some of our finest local kitchens to opening a deeply...

Absie Pantshwa is the other half of the Edge team that created a bunch of outstanding pop-up live-fire African dining experiences, crafted the menu at Boma on Bree, and operates Mlilo out of Time Out Market, Cape Town. Partnered with chef Vusi Ndlovu, she is a driving force behind a fresh way of looking at how African cooking lives in the culinary landscape. We sat down to talk about how she runs...

Vicky Gurovich has recently been promoted to Executive Sous Chef at the Belmond Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town. It's been a long time coming. She was head of pastry there under Chef Rudi Liebenberg and now runs the kitchen under the steady hand of Executive Chef Luke Barry. Together they've driven innovation in the iconic 'Nellie' Hight Team Tea and have launched a Saturday Br...

They call him 'the beef guy' because he knows a lot about beef. Steven Maresh created the Local Grill Group of restaurants in Gauteng and started Beef Club where he raised both consumer and producer knowledge about raising and preparing beef products. Today he consults to beef producers on branding and marketing and works with restaurants to improve both the quality and the profitability...

Ivor Jones is one of my favourite chefs, and someone who is often mentioned on the show by his contemporaries. He's all about technique and a pin-sharp dedication to exploring, and getting, the very best out of ingredients in terms of flavour and presentation. I simply can't get to CW Beau Constantia often enough, but when I do, it's always a joy. There as so much to chat about on t...

In this episode, I sit down with one of my food heroes - Chef Chris Erasmus. He's now Group Chef of the Newmark Hotel Group , and we discuss his commitment to sustainability and the importance of sourcing from small, family-owned suppliers. We rummaged around in his culinary journey and the philosophy behind his new restaurant, Terrarium , which recently opened at the Queen Victoria Hotel in...

In this episode of A Table in the Corner, I chat with Ken Kinsey-Quick, co-founder of Banhoek Chilli Oil, about the journey from kitchen experiments to national success and the opening of a global market. A quest with his brother-in-law Adi Meintjies to develop the perfect chilli oil to use at their dinner table led to the creation of a brand that enhances flavours in food without overpowering the...

Lance Gibbons is the CEO of SA Chef Media, and along with other players in the industry like FEDHASA and SA Chefs Association, he's put together the SA Chef Conference & Expo which is happening in Cape Town on November 25 & 26. On the cards are talks by Liam Tomlin, Luke Dale-Roberts and Chris Erasmus, as well as an address by Minister of Tourism, Patricia De Lille. One of the hoped-f...

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...