Taking the heat in the kitchen for the love of cooking
IT’S TUESDAY, 8am, and Darren O’Donovan is just about ready to leave his home in Fourways, ahead of a long frantic day.
He neatly packs his chef uniform in the car, and makes sure he is wearing his most comfortable pair of sneakers.
He has a 15-hour work day ahead of him. O’Donovan is the head chef of one of Joburg’s most popular eateries, Cube Tasting Kitchen. He has been the head chef of the Parktown restaurant for just over three years, but has been working there for nearly five years.
On other days, O’Donovan would head straight to the restaurant to start preparing for the evening, but on Tuesdays he has to make a number of stops to stores to stock up for the next few days.
The 26-year-old’s first stop is the Woolworths at the Nicolway Bryanston shopping centre. “I love using Woolies grapefruit juice and a few other items.”
O’Donovan then heads to Pick n Pay, where he purchases everything from flour to coffee beans and hand lotion.
He also stocks up on toiletries for the Cube.
“I’m sure it must be strange to see a head chef doing all of this, but I enjoy it and don’t mind being involved with everything from the cooking to the grocery shopping and stocking up toiletries for the bathroom.”
The young chef then heads to a fruit and vegetable market, as well as a traditional Chinese store and a spice shop.
At the Chinese store, he purchases bamboo shoots and vegetable dumplings, which he will use for one of the night’s dishes. “I love coming to this store because everything comes straight from China, and I love Asian-inspired dishes,” he says.
As he does his grocery shopping, O’Donovan is bombarded with calls from suppliers, who will be delivering meat, fish and fresh produce in the afternoon.
The restaurant prides itself on offering the freshest of food to its customers, so it orders fresh produce every few days.
It’s 11am and time for O’Donovan to head to the restaurant to start getting ready for the evening.
He takes a 5-minute smoke break, before meeting his team to discuss the plans for the day.
Cube Tasting Kitchen offers a creative 12-course tasting menu, which changes every four to six weeks.
On this night they will be preparing dishes such as a Jerk fish dish with pineapple and fennel; a prawn tortellini with sesame-scented vegetables; a grilled spiced-yoghurt chicken thigh with roast coconut and masala crémeux, carrot and orange; a beef cheeks dish with truffle and mouth-watering desserts.
As soon as the suppliers arrive, O’Donovan and his team of young chefs get down to work.
The vibe is relaxed but O’Donovan says things get fast and furious when it comes closer to dinner time.
The restaurant only opens its doors at 6pm and only serves dinner. It seats 35 people on a night, and they are fully booked every night.
O’Donovan and his team clean and cut the meats and fish, chop veggies julienne-style, and the pastry chefs begin their dessert items. This is just the beginning of a very long night.
O’Donovan admits that being a chef is an extremely demanding job, but says there is nowhere else he would rather be than in a kitchen.
“We are always on our feet. We work hard on weekends, we work in a dangerous environment around fire and very sharp knives, and our hands don’t stop moving, but I love it.
“Although we feel completely drained at the end of the night, there is nothing better than seeing customers walk out of the door with huge smiles on their face.”
The food Cube offers is not just food. They are known for their molecular gastronomy food. Since O’Donovan has been at Cube, he has worked on at least 750 different dishes.
“Here at Cube we like manipulating food items. For instance, we take olives and turn it into caviar, we take grapefruit and turn it into an exploding bubble, and we take meringues and instantly freeze them with liquid nitrogen to act as a palate cleanser. It’s just so much fun.”
One of the items on the menu is Cube’s version of a King Cone ice cream. It contains a sugar cone filled with leeks, liver pâté, truffle ice cream, pepper and fig.
Where does O’Donovan find the creativity to come up with these weird and wonderful dishes?
“To be honest, lots of my ideas come to me when I’m in the shower,” he says. “Aside from brainstorming with my team, we also do a fair bit of research to see what other chefs around the world are doing, and how we can make unique dishes for the restaurant.”
For the next few hours, O’Donovan and his team are hard at work preparing the tasting menu for their expected 35 diners.
O’Donovan hasn’t even had time to eat lunch and neither has his staff. He is getting by with coffee and a few smokes.
It’s 5pm and the waiters arrive and begin setting up the tables and cleaning the restaurant for the first booking at 6.30pm. “Our focus is on the food, so that’s why you will notice that our décor is simple, our plates and glasses are simple. Everything is very simple,” explains O’Donovan.
He and his team are just about finished the preparations for the night. All that remains is the searing of the meats and seafood, which will be done as the customers arrive.
They have half-an-hour to have some dinner. O’Donovan has rustled up a chicken cacciatore pasta for the team.
They sit outside at the back of the restaurant on the steps and on the floor.
“This is how we have our dinner every evening. We chat for a bit, eat our dinner, have a laugh and prepare for the night.”
Besides Sundays and Mondays when the restaurant is closed, the only time O’Donovan and his team get time off is when the restaurant closes for a month every year. “I try to spend my holiday overseas so I can learn from other chefs.”
After their meal, O’Donovan and his team return to the restaurant, ready to welcome the customers. “Our menu is quite crazy, so we visit each table and explain each dish that is presented to the customer, so they know exactly what they are eating.”
The dinner experience at Cube lasts three hours and at about 11pm the staff see off their last customers. But their day is not over. They have to clean up and O’Donovan also prepares and marinates some of the meats.
Once all is done, O’Donovan and his staff enjoy a glass of wine and a chat. The next day will be another long day.
For O’Donovan it’s the long drive back to Fourways before he can get a good night’s rest. “All I can think about is my huge comfy pillows,” he says.