‘SPENDING TIME IN THE KITCHEN AND WATCHING THE CHEFS INSPIRED ME TO GET INVOLVED’
FOR those who fail matric it often feels like reaching a dead end. It’s difficult not to think there’s little hope of having a good job one day. But for Fungile Ngubo of Franschhoek in the Western Cape the experience with failure taught him a valuable lesson about perseverance.
Finding out he’d failed Grade 12 crushed him. “I had dreams of studying further after school but unfortunately I failed maths literacy and life sciences,” he says.
He decided to rewrite the subjects he’d failed the following year but didn’t want to just sit at home in the months leading up to the supplementary exams.
“I grew tired and bored sitting at home – I wanted to earn an income and gain a bit of independence,” Fungile (35) says. “One of my friends knew about my situation and told me about a position as a general worker at Roca restaurant in Franschhoek.”
He put together his CV, applied and landed a job as a kitchen sculler, responsible for cleaning the kitchen, cooking equipment and utensils for the chefs at the restaurant.
“Initially my motivation was just to have an income while I waited to rewrite my exams,” says Fungile of landing the job in 2012. “I couldn’t believe I was even employed when not long before that I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
What he didn’t expect was that he’d find his passion in that kitchen he so meticulously cleaned every day.
He became intrigued by the processes he saw that took food from raw ingredients to tantalising dishes beautifully presented on a plate. “Spending time in the kitchen and watching the chefs inspired me to get involved and do more.”
The reaction and enjoyment on people’s faces when they were served the food also got him thinking about pursuing cooking. “I wanted to put smiles on people’s faces.”
After he’d expressed an interest in learning to cook, the head chef took Fungile under his wing and began to teach him the basics. “It was a good feeling to have someone guide me in the kitchen, but it was also difficult at times because every day I was learning something new,” he says of his early days of trial and error. But he loved learning how to blanche vegetables and cook meat to perfection.
That was 10 years ago, and Fungile now works as a chef de partie at the restaurant at Mont Rochelle Wine Estate in the
Cape Winelands. As chef de partie, also called a line cook, Fungile is responsible for a certain station in the kitchen where he’s in charge of particular areas of production, such as preparing vegetables for specific dishes, frying food or operating the grill.
“I love the pressure and adrenaline in the kitchen and I get to do something I enjoy every day,” Fungile says of his job, which now sees him prepare, cook and present high-quality dishes under the eye of the executive chef at the restaurant.
“Although I didn’t know what my path was going to be after failing matric, I learnt that if you’re passionate about something it’s important to ask questions and learn as much as you can. I really grew to love what I do.”