The mad love for a city in a rush
Cape Town had David Higgs’s cuisine and talent for three decades. Then, in one day, Joburg captured his heart. He’s been there ever since. We asked him why
Joburg people move to the Western Cape all the time. Not many leave Cape Town to find their fortune in the City of Gold. But David Higgs did. Even he didn’t see it coming.
Higgs has Namib beach sand between his toes and seafood in his heart. He is a man of firm resolve whose conviction that cooking in a professional kitchen was his future was evident the first time I set eyes on him. We were both in an evening class at Bill Stafford’s cookery school in Cape Town, and he paid such rapt attention to what we were being taught that I’ve never forgotten it.
He seemed very young, but when we chatted it became evident that he was already fairly advanced in his cooking ambitions, having started out in 1989 as a breakfast chef at the Tulbagh Protea Hotel on the Cape Town Foreshore, a humble start given the ultimate trajectory of his career.
Higgs became a firm fixture on the Cape restaurant scene for many years. Then, out of the blue, Johannesburg came calling.
I remember many eyebrows being raised when, around the time of the Soccer World Cup in 2010, Higgs suddenly disappeared from the Winelands restaurant scene just when he had reached the pinnacle of Rust en Vrede, where he was kitchen supremo, being chosen as the country’s best restaurant.
“I came up to Joburg when I was 40, which was 14 years ago, and there was no initial attraction at all. I was working on a wine farm in Stellenbosch; we were just voted best restaurant and it was an incredible space, Rust en Vrede, and still is. And there was an offer from somebody I knew, somebody that I’d worked for before and he said, ‘Please, I need some help.’
“It was this hotel that had opened for the World Cup and it was a bit of a rush job. And it basically imploded after the World Cup and he just wanted me to come and give a hand.”
Higgs was unprepared for the life change that was about to happen.
That day.
‘There was a pool party’
“Landed in Joburg… Jumped onto the Gautrain, whizzed through into Sandton. Worldclass. And then I walked across the road into the hotel and it was a Sunday afternoon and there was a pool party going on. Obviously no beaches, no mountains, no vineyards.
There was a beautifully integrated crowd, not something we were always used to in the Cape. I spent the afternoon talking to a young black architect by the name of Benedict, and it was just such a good energy. I didn’t even go for the interview. I just phoned the guy, Herman, and I said I’m in. I want to be in this city.”
Higgs found, in his instant new home, “a vibrant city, an integrated city. It was the energy of the city.
“Talking to someone later on, I said I love the energy of the city. And they said: ‘You must understand that Joburg exists because of the Gold
Rush and hasn’t really changed. There’s massive opportunity here; everything moves at 100km an hour; there’s no real off time, there’s no real off season.’
“It’s not like Cape Town where it ebbs and flows and so forth. And I feel that. I love this city and have made it my home, more than Cape Town has ever been.”
The Joburg Higgs fell in love with is a melting pot.
“How it relates to other cities, the Singapores, the Londons and the New Yorks, is that Joburg is a melting pot of African countries. West, east and southern Africa, and with that comes an incredible vibrancy: art, music, food, fashion.”
Though he has fallen in love with the Golden City, he wasn’t “a Joburg boy at all” as a kid. “Never spent any time there at all other than in the army once or twice,” he says.
‘I grew up in a desert’
Walvis Bay in Namibia was his home for his first 10 years. “My dad worked at a fishing factory. He was a storeman there and we used to go fishing before school and drive over the salt pan in a Land Rover, catch a couple of fish, and essentially that’s what we ate. All this fucking talk about farm to table and head to tail – we were doing it in the ’70s, ’60s, ’50s… Now it’s just a marketing thing that you throw around.
“But obviously, then, the fish were running properly in the ’70s and ’80s, so what we would do is we would catch fish, freeze them and then on holidays go up to the farmers and barter. We would get a couple of cattle or a cow and a sheep, and then hunt for game.
“We always had hydroponics in the back yard, because obviously I grew up in a desert so you couldn’t plant anything; it was all salt. So then you start understanding food from a young age, you know?”
So that was where and when Higgs’s story with food began – with fishing and hunting. He’s a man of the braai and the fireside, of
the flame that cooks the meat. He has run a slew of high-grade restaurants; is a founding partner in eateries including Saint, Marble and Zioux; has a gourmet store, Pantry; television appearances; and a classy book, Mile 8. Coming soon, set for late this year, is Marble Cape Town.
A passion for eccentric art
The art of the Golden City has become a passion and a hobby. “My home has some nice art in it, some valuable, some not so valuable.
“I love political art. I’ve got quite a few Jacob Zumas, I’ve got some Donald Trumps and that kind of thing, but obviously satirical – the Brett Murray stuff. I’ve got a painting of the recyclers of Joburg and [neo-pop artist] Richard Scott’s The Vibrancy, a big Johannesburg piece. It’s just my love for Joburg.”
Awards: space for genres
David tends not to comment on controversial aspects of national restaurant awards, but when asked for his views, he drew a clear differentiation between the fine dining restaurants that tend to win these awards and “large-format restaurants”, his own Marble being an example.
There’s space, he says, for two genres of judging: the fine dining end, which is the pinnacle of dining in South Africa but feeds “less than 1% of our population” and whose clientele comprises mostly foreigners, and large-format restaurants, which might feed up to 300 or 400 people a day, a massive and difficult undertaking. He found some of the awards handed out this year “questionable”.
What real life is about for this man is hard work, every day, every month, every year.
Coda
The boy from Walvis Bay, fishing for the pot, hunting the beast. The grown man in Johannesburg, an exponent of the beguiling Gold Rush city that has never lost touch with its roots.