'I believe we need to create a national cuisine', says chef Wandile Mabaso

Chef Wandile Mabaso is ridiculously low key. In an industry that has a reputation for huge egos and inflated reputations, he is almost Zen-like in his self-effacing commitment to the culinary arts and his belief in the transformative power of a national cuisine.

We meet at one of my locals — Parea on Corlett Drive. I am of Greek extraction after all, so I am in permanent need of a gustatory fix of nostalgia. 

This traditional kitchen, presided over by Niko who is always sporting a wry smile, a tropical shirt and an obligatory gold chain,  hits the spot every time.

I also chose this place because most chefs have an abiding appreciation of plain, simple fare, made with the freshest ingredients, and I am hoping to keep Wandile happy.

This is a man who has spent years in some of the world’s most storied kitchens, honing his insanely impressive credentials under the scrutiny of such legends as Alain Ducasse.

Wandile knows what it takes to get three Michelin stars because he has burnished his cooking scars in the best kitchens in the world. So I am delighted to find an inspired, real, grounded and fiercely disciplined person behind the knives.

His earliest food memory sets the scene. “I was probably about eight years old, we used to roam around Soweto and we would disappear all day and come back at sunset all dusty and dirty.

“It was normal for us, it was safe back then. But when we would disappear we would obviously get hungry. And as a result we would catch pigeons for fun. And then eventually, we learnt that we can actually cook these birds and pigeons. That’s how it started off.”

An uncle who worked with an Indian family taught him to refine his recipes, and add spices and coriander to the “pigeon à la baronet” on coals.  

After his parents divorced he took an increasingly active role in his mother’s kitchen. “We kept on moving, it was quite unstable. And as a result, she had to work extra hours as a single mom. I started cooking from necessity. We had to get something to eat.”

By the time he was 12 he could prepare a full-blown Sunday lunch. When he went to boarding school, where he excelled at sports and played in the provincial hockey team, he sold gourmet snackwich toasties to his classmates.

At 15 he organised “what I realise now was actually a food and wine experience.

“We snuck into the cellar at boarding school and I was the skinniest and smallest so I could fit in the window and we picked out wine to pair with the snackwich toasties.”

The Friday night foray into fine dining ended in tears and severe warnings, but his cooking exploits progressed unabated.

But his parents insisted he go to hotel school to secure a “managerial” role. This was before the rise and rise of food-porn television. Celebrity chefs where not what they are now, and his family could not understand his desire to work in the kitchen.

Given our setting, and the tzatziki, I am reminded of a Greek saying that goes something like: “All impediments are for the good.”

In Wandile’s case the fact that the hotel school placed him in a very pedestrian and depressing hotel chain to do his practical training lit a fire under his frying pan and incentivised him to get the hell out of Dodge. 

He hustled hard and got a break — and this is the golden thread running through his entire career. He worked on a superyacht that took him on a culinary tour of glamorous ports in Europe, a journey that led him to his vocation.

The world-class chefs working on the yacht were a revelation, and with his earnings he signed up for culinary school.

The rest is a heady tale of being head-hunted to work in Palm Beach and all the attendant perks — extreme 15-hour days, burns, cuts and bruises. 

He moved to New York, where, after pounding the streets and living on two baguettes a day, he got in on the ground floor with a French chef who had grown up with football player Pierre Issa and so had a soft spot for South Africa. “It was a lucky break.”

The break set him on a stellar path. He worked for Jean-Georges Vongerichten and  Olivier Reginensi before going to Paris, where he was taken under the tutelage of Ducasse. “For the first three months in Paris I never saw the sun.”

His cooking pedigree is basically top notch. Which is why his decision to return to South Africa and open a fine dining restaurant in Johannesburg  — Les Créatifs — is left field and exciting.

He has won practically every accolade, including chef of the year, he survived the Covid crisis and has grown a talented and disciplined team — without the culture of abuse in the kitchen. And he did it from the ground up,  because nobody knew who he was.

I tell him it’s about time that Chef’s Table came to document his story. His answer is inspiring.

“I really am not thinking about TV. I believe we need to create a national cuisine, that is my vision. Our own unique take that will drive tourism and build and reinforce our national identity and forge unity.

"Look at what Noma [the world’s No 1 restaurant] has done for Copenhagen and Denmark. We have not even begun to explore and redefine our traditional food culture in South Africa. And we have at least 11, if not more, cultures to build on.”