After saving Grace with a bath, it’s time to celebrate
● It used to be said that if you wanted to be seen making a deal, do it at the Hyatt, but if you wanted to do business quietly, meet at the Grace.
These days the Rosebank, Johannesburg, hotel landmarks have been dealt mixed fortunes.
The Hyatt Regency remains mothballed despite the lifting of pandemic restrictions (rumour is it might be converted into a “dark kitchen” to feed our appetite for food deliveries).
On the other hand, the Grace around the corner (now known as 54 on Bath after Tsogo Sun bought it about a decade ago) popped the champers to celebrate its 25th birthday on Wednesday.
It was an unusually chilly and wet evening as I headed inside the grand building with its distinctive facebrick exterior to the sound of Happy Birthday being played on the grand piano in the lobby by Will Sibeko.
Picking up a cocktail, I wave to someone I last saw a little more than three years ago at this very hotel when she joined me for birthday drinks.
That’s Uyanda Mbuli who, in the mid2000s, was one of the country’s “It” girls. Today she juggles business interests, including a share in a growing food business.
Uyanda tells me she’s just come back from Lesotho, where she attended Prime Minister Samuel Ntsokoane Matekane’s inauguration.
Next I say hello to Lumka Dlomo, the effervescent destination marketing manager for Joburg Tourism, and meet Tsogo Sun CEO Marcel von Aulock and his wife Leigh.
Remembering reading that Marcel resigned from the gaming and hotel group in 2017, but returned a year later, I ask: “Why the change of heart?”
“They gave me hotels and I thought, that sounds like fun.”
On to catching up with a former colleague, Laurice Taitz-Buntman, the editor and publisher of the Johannesburg In Your Pocket city guide, before we are ushered upstairs for the main festivities.
In the lift to Level Four, the hotel’s restaurant overlooking a rooftop garden, I recognise a cheerful grey-haired man.
It’s the hotel’s original owner, Chippy Brand, who also started the Mount Grace in Magalies and the equally grand Cape Grace Hotel in Cape Town.
“This used to be the slowest lift in South Africa. I think it still is,” quips Chippy.
And of the interiors redecorated by David Muirhead when the hotel’s name changed, Chippy’s wife Cynthia says: “It looks so different!”
Meanwhile, thanks to this paper’s food ed, Hilary Biller, I meet the hotel’s original chef, Stefano Strafella, and new executive chef, Kalpesh Hansjee.
As the two lead me through the double swinging doors to the industrial kitchen, Stefano points out that the hotel’s makeover didn’t extend to this part of the property, where we spot Kalpesh’s team in the midst of putting the finishing touches to dishes that will feed us.
They include items “re-engineered” from The Grace’s original menu, such as salmon and seaweed tartar; oyster and champagne soup; and impala, herbed mash and wild mushroom ragout.
Other morsels include blue cheese; roasted pear and hazelnut crumble; and pickled fish with mebos and braised pickled onion.
My fave? The crostinis with a quenelle of chicken liver pâté and spiced crispy onions which are savoury, with just the right touch of sweetness.
And the guests? Everywhere you turn is a familiar face, from businesswoman Johanna Makgalemele (whose dress matched the houndstooth print of the chair she was sitting on), TV presenter Chris Jaftha, environmentalist Catherine Constantinides, radio personality Penny Lebyane and music legends Yvonne Chaka Chaka and Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse.
When I learn that Sipho has a reason to celebrate — his 71st birthday — I rope in Johanna and Yvonne to sing Happy Birthday to the Burn Out hit maker. Between musical performances by Allegra Soul and Louise Carver, the hotel’s GM, Madeleine Roux, kicks off the official programme by welcoming us, before Chippy gets up, confiding that he sort of fell into the hotel business.
He’d been “building roads and bridges” until Sol Kerzner asked him to build the golf course at Sun City.
“We’re not hoteliers, and because we are not, we ran it like a family,” he says, adding that staff were told they were selling “peace and beauty”.
Meanwhile, Marcel says reopening the hotel in November last year “was one of the highlights for me. Proper joy!” and thanks us “for coming to celebrate this little moment for a big industry which has been through a lot”.