Chef Theo Chiloane’s avant-garde approach to bistro-style food
The 9th Avenue Waterside chef, who once ‘blew the socks off’ a fellow chef, shares his recipe for green tea-cured salmon with sake and grapefruit
Theodorus Chiloane rules the kitchen roost at one of Durban’s most sought-after restaurants, 9th Avenue Waterside, the name of which tells you exactly where you’ll find it: right in the docklands with its swooping seagulls, ships at moor and the smell of salty air. A smell that has you salivating for seafood.
Mpumalanga-born and -raised Theo (34) won this chef post after having to cook for fellow Kwazulu-natal chef Kayla-ann Osborn. She had been asked to help find a brilliant new chef, and after extensive investigation, chef Theo was her choice.
She told my colleague Wanda Hennig at the time: “He blew my socks off. I don’t know where he’s been hiding.”
Chef Theo has a clear vision: “My direction with 9th Avenue Waterside is to reaffirm where the avant-garde approach of bistro-style food is heading within the Durban landscape, and educating the general public to be more open to the emotional expression of food as a whole instead of playing it safe and not learning anything new.”
And, though not everything on his menu is from the sea, a fair deal of it is.
Starters at 9th Avenue Waterside include West Coast mussels and East Coast prawns, though the latter dish has a langoustine bisque curry, prawn tails and a grilled whole prawn. Scallops are served with a pea purée, smoked tomato and trout roe.
Main courses are much meatier, with sesame chicken (confit leg and roulade), Kwazulu-natal Caldhame duck, beef fillet, rack of lamb and Norwegian salmon, with the day’s “market fish” being a wise option. It’s brushed with peri-peri butter.
For that trial-by-chef Kayla, chef Theo cooked langoustine.
He told Hennig: “I decided to make a starter using langoustines, so the first thing when I arrived here, I asked for langoustine shells. I partially roasted them, ground them up and put them, with white wine, through a heating process to make a fumet, which is a concentrated aromatic stock.”
Chef Theo has kindly given us his green teacured salmon with sake and grapefruit recipe, and there is a bit of skill required in the preparation.