A lovely taxi driver parked at a carwash in Midrand next to one of those developments cleverly built using containers is so delighted at the prospect of showing me the way to Eziko that he takes it upon himself to deliver me right to the door and ensure I am well received.
I have boldly ventured north to meet globally renowned South African chef Nokx Majozi, who is back home to promote a new collection of local recipes, The South African Cookbook. She has chosen Eziko to do this because Chef Andile Somdaka, who once cooked for Nelson Mandela, is an old friend, and this is where she feels her heart settle into the tastes of home.
One extra celebrity chef I can handle — and Chef Andile is the consummate host — but there are chefs everywhere. They keep materialising, embracing one another, pulling up chairs and disappearing into the kitchen — all of them here to visit and spontaneously celebrate their friend Nokx. At one point, I wonder aloud what the collective noun for chefs might be.
“A brigade,” someone volunteers.
Of course it is. Kitchens are battlegrounds, and those who inhabit them have the scars to prove it.
Chef Andile has decided he needs to impress, so he produces a feast fit for African kings: chicken in many variations, beef stew, ox tongue, liver, sheep’s head, chakalaka, umfino, steamed bread, spinach harvested that morning from his garden, and magnificently creamy samp and beans. We dutifully discuss the ubiquitous trend of adding coffee creamer to the samp, and the chefs, I must report, are not amused.
At boarding school, she discovered home economics and decided she wanted to become a professional chef. Her parents were appalled. The community was equally perplexed. ‘Why pay someone to teach you to cook? Give us the money,’ they said. ‘We’ll teach you’
“This was Madiba’s favourite. He loved it.”
This is how I find myself eating Nelson Mandela’s favourite lunch, tasting the smiley with alacrity and taking to the tongue with a gusto I find quite refreshing.
Nokx left KwaZulu-Natal more than two decades ago and became one of our most celebrated culinary exports, much to her parents’ surprise. She was born in eSikhawini, near Richards Bay, and grew up around Dlangezwa. Her grandfather farmed chickens, mielies and vegetables, while her father worked at the harbour.
Unusually for a man of his generation, he loved to cook. He brought home fresh fish and experimented with ideas he picked up from European sailors who arrived at the port. He cooked green papaya with chopped peppers, meticulously preparing everything himself beforehand.
Nokx was one of five children but positioned herself permanently beside him in the kitchen.
“So you were his sous chef?”
“Yes,” she laughs. “And I got told off if I didn’t do things properly.”
At boarding school, she discovered home economics and decided she wanted to become a professional chef. Her parents were appalled. The community was equally perplexed. “Why pay someone to teach you to cook? Give us the money,” they said. “We’ll teach you.”
But Nokx stood her ground, won a bursary to study hospitality at what is now Durban University of Technology, and began working at Durban’s Riverside Hotel. Then Disney World came looking for African chefs and, after taking part in the Durban auditions, she was the only South African selected.
“So you leave South Africa and arrive at Disney World, and then what do they make you cook?”
“South African food.”
We both laugh.
She had travelled halfway across the planet to discover that the thing of value she was carrying was home. Cooking African food for an international audience became her first experience of cuisine as cultural representation.
“I was so proud. I was representing South Africa.”
In 2003 she moved to London, intending to stay there for two years before going to France. However, the British capital seduced her with its extraordinary food culture.
As a woman, sometimes you have to prove yourself 10 times
— Chef Nokx Majozi
She worked her way through the InterContinental, Brown’s and eventually Rosewood London, climbing the old-fashioned kitchen hierarchy one brutal rung at a time.
“You earn every stage.”
For years, she was frequently the only woman in kitchens filled with men from all around the world. She worked 12- and even 14-hour shifts, battling with the physical intensity and relentless pressure of the service industry, as well as the constant need to prove herself.
“As a woman, sometimes you have to prove yourself 10 times.”
And she did. At Rosewood London, she became synonymous with its celebrated Pie Room, where the humble British pie is turned into an object of intricate culinary theatre.
What constitutes a great pie? “The pastry. It has to be crispy. It has to be properly cooked. The bottom cannot be soggy. What I see outside the pie I want inside. I don’t want something to look beautiful, but then I cut into it and it’s bland.”
She is now chef in residence at London’s highly regarded Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant Fallow, developing food, mentoring younger chefs, and increasingly bringing South African flavours into her work.
The idea for The South African Cookbook began in international bookshops. “I would see cookbooks from everywhere. But where was the one from South Africa?”
She wanted to put out into the world the cuisine she knew: food that was “diverse, bold and vibrant”, carrying within it the extraordinary complexity of the country.
The book has recipes for samp and beans, amagwinya, boerewors, bunny chow, chakalaka and milk tart, but also ones for the intensely personal food of her childhood. Her grandmother wrapped cornbread in corn husks and steamed it, trapping its fragrance inside the shucks. Another dish layers amadumbe, sweet potatoes, corn and green bananas in a three-legged pot.
“We would all sit down and share from it.”
Which brings us back to Eziko, where sharing has become unavoidable.
Nokx is laughing and eating beside me, and I realise that for all her technical training, international experience and time spent in rarefied kitchens, enjoying a delicious meal is what animates her most.
“What does food actually mean to you?”
“Celebration,” she says immediately. “Togetherness. Sharing. Identity. It takes me home.”
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