The traditional childhood favourite dishes of Chef Mmabatho Molefe saw her\u00a0Emazulwini Restaurant at Makers Landing at the V&A Waterfront win African Restaurant of the Year at the\u00a04th annual Luxe Restaurant Awards last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dishes created by the\u00a0humble Molefe impressed\u00a0a team of anonymous food critics, with the panel of judges convened by Chad Fourie, the chief judge of the Luxe Restaurant Awards and the managing director of The Hospitality Counsel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Emazulwini was one of three fine-dining restaurants at the V&A Waterfront, which scooped awards at the Luxe Restaurant Awards \u2013 Pier won New Restaurant of the Year while chef Siba Mtongana of The Table Bay\u2019s eponymous \u2018Siba\u2019 won the Culinary Icon Award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Emazulwini, which opened about 18 months ago, is a modern Zulu-inspired restaurant which seeks to celebrate Nguni cuisine and South African ingredients. \u201cWe are just a small 10-seater space, and are still testing whether the idea works,\u201d\u00a0Molefe said. Just four people work at Emazulwini;\u00a0one person handles front of house with three in the kitchen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe travelled to the awards ceremony in Johannesburg mostly to meet industry players that I have engaged with online, and we just happened to win an award. However, I am now a little anxious because people might come to dine with higher expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Molefe\u2019s aim is to continue spreading the word about rethinking traditional food and reusing ingredients that people deem less than worthy. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Emazulwini recently launched its summer menu, which is dedicated to\u00a0Molefe\u2019s\u00a0parents. \u201cIt is a seven-course set menu, starting with\u00a0mielie bread sticks with sweetcorn dip and parsley mayo, and includes dishes such as vetkoek with home-made chicken polony, white cheddar catalan, and corned beef tongue with tomato pur\u00e9e. The\u00a0chicken neck mousse tartlet looks so cute that is my personal favourite.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dessert is fermented maize porridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy mother, Sindi, and Chef Ryan Cole who I worked under at Salsify at the Roundhouse inspire the way I cook.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Molefe\u2019s aim is to continue spreading the word about rethinking traditional food and reusing ingredients that people deem less than worthy. \u201cWe use a lot of offal on the menu at the moment, which is usually seen as food that privileged people don\u2019t want to eat, but it has a lot of flavour and can be used with many different techniques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAwareness of Emazulwini has been constantly growing since we opened, so I am sure this award will continue that and help us to expand further.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAfter a difficult time under COVID-19 for the restaurant industry, it is good to see renewed interest and focus in this category again.\u00a0We are welcoming visitors back to their favourite destination with a fresh line-up of food offerings, and are extremely privileged to be home to a range and degree of diversity in quality chefs and restaurants acknowledged to be the best in their categories\u201d, said Alex Kabalin, the executive for retail at the Waterfront.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The traditional childhood favourite dishes of Chef Mmabatho Molefe saw her\u00a0Emazulwini Restaurant at Makers Landing at the V&A Waterfront win African Restaurant of the Year at the\u00a04th annual Luxe Restaurant Awards last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food-wine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atableforone.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atableforone.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atableforone.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atableforone.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atableforone.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2181"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/atableforone.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2184,"href":"https:\/\/atableforone.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2181\/revisions\/2184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atableforone.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atableforone.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atableforone.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atableforone.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}