TASTE OF HOME ALIVE
Tulbagh in the Cape Winelands, with his partner.
He is currently unemployed, but hopes to open his own vegan restaurant one day.
John Chikala, 23, and his family moved to South Africa from Angola in 2004 when his mother wanted a better life and education for John and his siblings.
The family settled in Goodwood, Cape Town, where John also matriculated in 2014.
While his friends went on to further their studies, John was still undecided about his future.
During a visit to a friend’s home, John picked up a newspaper that helped change the course of his life.
“I didn’t know what to do while all my friends went to study,” he says.
“I went to a friend’s house and I had no idea what I was going to do (with my life), when I saw a newspaper and in it I read I could become a chef.
“I kept that paper for three days, and when my mother asked me what I was going to do with my life, I said I wanted to become a chef,” he says.
Thankfully, John already knew how to cook and it was something he liked, in addition to sports.
“Growing up was tough. I am the eldest brother so whenever my mother got ill I had to cook,” John says.
“I enrolled at Sense of Taste culinary art school, and eight months later my mother passed away.
“After that I survived a car crash, and that’s when I realised I had to take my life seriously.
“From that point I had no choice but to love my career,” he says.
John, who’s a chef at Aubergine Restaurant, says finding the ingredients for traditional food is not as difficult as people may think.
“There’s a lot of local ingredients everywhere you go,” he says.
“You can make any traditional food because you can find the ingredients anywhere. If you know how to cook with it and you present it to people, if you like it then others will also like your food,” he says.
John says cooking traditional food is the one thing that connects him to his country of birth.
“Although my brothers and I forgot our home language, we can’t forget the food that our mother and grandmother made, and what it tasted like,” he says.
Winemaker Joseph Dhafana and his wife left Zimbabwe in 2009 to start a better life in South Africa.
He settled in Riebeek-Kasteel where he worked as a gardener at Bar Bar Black Sheep Restaurant, and was then promoted to barman.
On his 29th birthday, Joseph tasted his first glass of wine, Pieter Cruythoff Methodé Cap Classique, and was amazed that the MCC he was sipping on had been made from grapes.
In 2013 Joseph enrolled at the Cape Wine Academy, and in 2014 he produced his own wine for the very first time.
Today Joseph is the head sommelier at La Colombe, a board member of the Black Cellar Club and the captain of Team Zimbabwe, which competed at the World Blind Wine Tasting Championships in Burgundy last year.
Cooking was a passion that started at a young age, and when I arrived in South Africa I wanted to further my studies but I didn’t have the money. So I continued to teach myself...