A Table in the Corner Russel Wasserfall Media

Amy Gardiner is a peach! Her brand, Humble Coffee, is a touchstone for quality and inclusivity in its Durban home, much loved both by her wholesale and coffee shop customers. A social entrepreneur at heart, Amy also has an instinctive understanding of building strong brands. She has worked hard on her roasting and trading skills, while creating a wonderful team to drive the Humble Coffee promise and engagement. I thoroughly enjoyed my chat with her on a recent visit to Durban. Humble Coffee ...

Brian Green is the creative mind behind 44 Stanley, the iconic urban renewal development in Jozi. We met at a friend’s birthday lunch recently, and our chat about renting space to restaurants and the role of eateries and other creative businesses in reviving urban spaces turned into a podcast. Brian’s Group 44 outfit also did Victoria Yards in Johannesburg and more recently developed a building in the Bree Street precinct. It’s a wide-ranging chat about an angle on running restaurants that I ...

Food tours are a great way to discover the pulse of a city when you travel. That's how Rupesh Kassen has always immersed himself in the cities he's travelled to. So when he moved to Cape Town and started exploring the food and culture of the 'Mother City', it seemed an obvious gap in the local tourism market that he could step into. With a background as a chef and a long stint in the corporate finance world, he thought it was time for (another) career change, so he started Eat Like A Local. I...

Barely a week after we recorded this chat, Chef Anwar Abdullatief’s restaurant was named African Restaurant of the Year at the Luxe Restaurant Awards. A stunning achievement for an talented chef who never really intended to open a restaurant. Tired of fine diner kitchens, he thought he’d do something with food products. Somehow, along the way he found himself opening the excellent Barakat at Time Out Cape Town, and then The Happy Uncles, the city’s first halal fine diner, kind of opened itsel...

He's been on my list of people to chat to since the very first show, but I finally got to sit down with Bertus Basson for a conversation that was totally not kak. We first met when I shot a portrait of a young chef who was shaking up the restaurant scene in Cape Town back in 2008. We've known each other 16 years and he is a friend I respect and admire even though we don't see each other much because he has a family, seven restaurants, a catering company, a pig and a bunch of dogs. We spoke ab...

This fascinating chat with charcutier Richard Bosman was prompted by an article about a dish he created for a story by Tony Jackman in Daily Maverick. I've known Richard for a while and always admired his artisanal charcuterie business, but reading the story reminded me that he'd be a great person to chat to on the show. While much of the discussion is about a traditional food craft, running a food business and Richard's background and business journey, we do touch on the source of vari...