A ceremonial affair
OYSTER Box Hotel head chef Luke Nair took a journey down memory lane this week. He was speaking to 19 cookery graduates at the LIV village Culinary School, which caters for people from the LIV village orphanage and surrounding Cottonlands community.
“Seeing a goat in the road made me think of myself as a little boy. It was very exciting going there,” said Nair, who was born 8km up the road, near Ndwedwe.
Nair told the graduates the world was at their feet, but that it took hard work and dedication to get anywhere.
His journey, after a humble farm childhood, went on to beachfront hotels while attending lectures, and walking long distances in the dark at the risk of getting mugged to catch trains.
In later years, at the Royal Hotel he cooked for Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh. “I remember him joking to me that my name Nair sounded like hair,” he said. At the Royal there were days when the hotel fed 3 500 people for breakfast, lunch and supper.
Nair told the graduates they had been given a fantastic start, having received free training, recalling that he had paid R450 000 to educate his children – one as a chef, the other in finance.
Now 61, he is busy writing a recipe book when not in the kitchen at the Oyster Box. “It will be coming out in July or August next year and includes 88 recipes.”