Bubbling under: Marcus Gericke of Qunu at The Saxon
The junior sous chef at Qunu at The Saxon counts a 16-year-old sourdough starter called Pete among his most prized possessions
I won the Food for Thought
Award, voted for by the online community of Fine Dining Lovers, at the San Pellegrino Young Chef competition in October 2019.
The first thing I learnt to make
was bread. I even remember the recipe – a basic white sourdough. I still have the starter – it’s now 16 years old. We call it Pete.
I fell in love with
cooking because
my dad was a chef.
When he opened his own chef school in 2005, I became part of the furniture. He’s not with us anymore, but I always try to keep the old man smiling.
My favourite dish as a child was mushroom
and threecheese soup. My dad made it religiously. I made it as soup of the day here at The Saxon, but I elevated it with a green chive oil.
My mentors are
here at The Saxon:
Chef Jane-Therese
Mulry and Chef Candice Philip. They really helped me with my dish for the San Pellegrino competition. It was a five-month journey.
The quail dish originally started as a chicken dish that my dad and I used to make with ingredients from our garden. We’ve got a fantastic garden here at The Saxon, so we grew our own fennel and pickled it. I got the most compliments about that pickled fennel.
I admire Swedish Chef Magnus
Nilsson of Fäviken, Vladimir Mukhin of the White Rabbit in Moscow, and Grant Achatz of Alinea in Chicago. Achatz is on a different level with experimenting – last year he did a distilled pumpkin pie with a clear jelly.
The best part of my job is
coming up with fish and soup
ideas. I like challenging people with something they’re not accustomed to. For example, I made a blueberry cream, which came out shocking purple, and built a tuna dish on top of it.
I don’t really have a favourite
ingredient, but I love playing with ingredients to get the most out of them.
I’m looking forward to attending
the grande finale of the San Pellegrino competition in Milan in May. Although I didn’t win the main prize,
I did win a trip of a lifetime to connect with chefs and the best of the best in our industry.
One day, I’d like to train
young chefs at my dad’s school, the Food and Beverage Institute in Bloemfontein. That’s where I started so it would be nice to finish there.
I made a shocking purple blueberry cream and built a tuna dish on top of it”