TV Series

Celeb chef Zola Nene ventures into 'Uncharted' territory with Gordon Ramsay

21 May 2020 - 09:11 By Hilary Biller
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Zola Nene started her TV career as the resident chef on SABC3's morning show 'Expresso'.
Zola Nene started her TV career as the resident chef on SABC3's morning show 'Expresso'.
Image: Malcolm Drummond/Sunday Times

It's good to hear that SA's effervescent celebrity chef Zola Nene will be cooking alongside British food icon Gordon Ramsay in the premiere of the second season of his National Geographic show, Uncharted.

The unflappable Nene is a straight talker with bucket loads of good humour and great skill, so she's sure to have had Ramsay eating out of the palm of her hand — we'll have to wait until the show hits our screens in August to find out.

The episode in question was filmed in KwaZulu-Natal and will see Ramsay get up close with wildlife, meet braai masters, soak up some local culture in a township, and learn the secrets of the traditional cuisine of Zulu warriors.

Together with Nene, he'll also cook up a feast for a yet unnamed revered Zulu chief. Apparently chakalaka will be on the menu.

WATCH | The trailer for the second season of 'Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted'

Part cooking show, part adventure travel series, Uncharted, follows Ramsay as he traverses the globe from SA to Sumatra to learn about different food cultures and culinary traditions.

The Ironman chef gets plenty of opportunities to show off his athletic prowess along the way. In season two, he'll be diving treacherous waters in search of spiny lobsters in Tasmania and wading into a bat-infested cave in the hunt for giant prawns in Indonesia.

The first season of Uncharted received mixed reviews. In some quarters the show was described as Ramsay “taking his ego around the world’". Others questioned whether a partnership between the well-respected, seriously-natured National Geographic brand and the famously foul-mouthed chef made sense.

None of this stopped Ramsay's fans from lapping up every minute of it. After all, they know that it's the chef's unpredictability that makes watching him in action so exciting.

• The second season of 'Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted' premieres on National Geographic (DStv channel 181) on August 25 at 9pm.


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