TGIFood

From Queen Mary 2 to the Red Karoo — the stories that shaped my year

Anna Trapido’s take on Gqeberha’s/Port Elizabeth's Hong Kong chicken, which is hardly known beyond the city where it is adored. (Photos: Anna Trapido)

By Tony Jackman

20 Dec 2024

Stories sometimes creep up on you, others leap at you out of the blue. Some stories are work, others hold meaning. From the grandeur of Queen Mary 2 to the mysterious doors of the old Garob, these are the pieces I wrote this year that brought joy in the writing.

In a writer’s life, you sometimes wake up one morning not knowing what you’ll be writing, then something occurs to you, you put fingers to keyboard, and by the end of the day, if you’re lucky, you have something you’re proud to have written. All of these fit that bill.

Please read on, because after I’ve shared my personal choice of the stories I’m glad to have written in 2024, there are other stories by my TGIFood contributors that meant a lot to me as well, and I’ll share those too.

The restaurant that became an empire, by the man who created it

Renaissance man: Franck Dangereux, the chef who ignited a restaurant empire, but went his own way to escape the accolades. (Photos: Supplied)

The man was chef Franck Dangereux. The original restaurant was La Colombe. Today it is the “La Colombe Group” and renowned worldwide. But once upon a time, it was an idea by a chef to do something in honour of his mother. Read the story of one of the chefs I admire the most in the world, Franck Dangereux.

A lost boy’s journey through time on board Queen Mary 2

The focal point of the two-storey Britannia restaurant on board Queen Mary 2 is a giant tapestry of the liner in a ticker tape departure from New York, by Barbara Broekman. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Boarding a glamorous passenger liner has captivated me as long as I have been alive. Suddenly finding myself having dinner on board the grandest loner of them all, Queen Mary 2, was the highlight in a year that has offered a surprising number of highlights (you never expect any, they happen if they happen).

The experience took me back to my very troubled adolescent days, days which at many times I thought I would never survive or escape. Yet here we are. Serendipity follows me around. Here’s one example of that.

Meiringspoort Reveries, Parts 1 and 2

Meiringspoort: Waar die kranse antwoord gee. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Often, the destination is the point of the journey, but on this occasion, it was the route there that provided the story. The object of the trip was the Vino Camino in Prince Albert, which I did write about. But it was the drive through Meirinspooort to reach it, and again on our return home via De Rust, that gave me the story that touched my soul and, it seems, the hearts of many others who read it.

There are two parts to the story, Meringspoort Reveries, space and time meet where the echoing crags resound, and Meiringspoort Reveries, scanning time and space in the back of a 1964 Cortina GT.

How Joburg stole the heart of a top Cape chef

David Higgs. (Photos: Elsa Young)

The chef is David Higgs, whom I first met decades ago though we were always acquaintances, contacts, rather than friends. But I’ve kept tabs on his career ever since, and earlier this year I felt moved to tell his story — this followed my piece on Franck Dangereux, discussed further up in this piece.

David was supremely helpful and willing to tell me everything in response to a series of probing WhatsApp questions. I was glad that he was very happy with the piece that resulted, and that he truly opened up. I had always thought him somewhat remote, and it took me by surprise when he was so very forthcoming. Thanks David, your openness made the story.

Sailing away with chef Reuben under a pizza pie moon

Chef Reuben Riffel on board MSC Poesia at sea this week with, left, the Italian cruise ship departing from Gqeberha and, right, docked in Cape Town two days later. (Photos|collage: Tony Jackman)

Chef Reuben Riffel and I go back to the Nineties when he was starting out in Franschhoek and not yet famous. In my second unexpected return to the high seas earlier this year, I found myself invited on a cruise between Gqeberha/Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. There was a guest chef on board, cooking South African food for the ship’s passengers in one of the dining rooms on board. And who should the chef be but Reuben. What a time we had — read all about it here.

Justin Bonello’s Cederberg hideaway, an escape from the madness in the ancient Red Karoo

Justin alights from his Red Cederberg Escapes Land Rover and welcomes us to Stadsaal at the start of our mini hike. Right: C Louis Leipoldt, top, and DF Malan, on the walls of Stadsaal cavern. (Photos: Tony Jackman)

Justin Bonello, famed in various parts of the world for his various TV cooking series and many books, invited me to one of his Red Cederberg escapes, and not being well familiar with the Cederberg I honestly had not a clue as to what to expect.

I left, at the end of that weekend, an utter Cederberg devotee. That’s how special this experience was. Read why.

The Pink Lady shows a little leg as a new era dawns (a two-part series)

The view from the third storey of the Mount Nelson towards the gardens that hug the Oasis restaurant. Right: executive chef Luke Barry in an area that will become a second herb and vegetable garden. (Photos: Tony Jackman)

Our relationship goes back decades, the Pink Lady and I, so it was thrilling to be back in the curves of her ample bosom. She is the Mount Nelson Hotel (in the unlikely event that you did not know that), and even though there have been many cosmetic changes at the old inn, everything important remains intact.

Read this initial piece and then this sequel for the full experience. Only the other day I penned a third piece, The long view of Cape restaurants and what was lost.

Johnny Theunissen, gem of the Karoo, laird of our hearts

‘I’m going up!’ David Rawdon said to Johnny Theunissen in 2013 shortly before the hotelier died. Johnny had a habit of looking up too, seen here in his element at the piano in the Lairds Arms at the Lord Milner Hotel in Matjiesfontein. (Photos and collage: Tony Jackman)

There’s no happiness in having had to write this piece, only an appreciation and gratitude that I was able to pay tribute to a great human being my family had known ever since he was a teenager.

It broke my heart to write it and I sobbed throughout. Matjiesfontein and the Lord Milner Hotel will never be the same without this Piano Man of God and friend of everyone who passed through the hotel doors, for decades.

Next week we will return, our first family visit since his passing, and I know I will break down in tears when I see his piano, with him not seated there, fingers plink-a-plonk, in his black bowler hat, belting out Blueberry Hill and De la Rey.

Bless you old friend.

Earlier in the year I had said farewell to two friends and food writers of great note, Michael Olivier and Peter Veldsman. Here are my tributes to Michael and Peter.

Secrets and lives behind the great doors of the old Garob

Portals in Karoo houses. From left: door after door inside the Hantam Huis, Calvinia; the front door of the Boekehuis, Calvinia; the door to the house in Market Street that has been named after a lowly food scribe. April 2024. (Photos and collage: Tony Jackman)

This may turn out to be one of the last of the many pieces I’ve written over the past 10 years about travels through the Karoo, this way and that.

Every journey has its stories, and my occasional trips along Route 63 between Graaff-Reinet and Calvinia (which ventures from the Eastern to the Western and then Northern Cape) always bring anecdotes and sights worth writing about.

In April, venturing to Calvinia and, three weeks later, back home, I found myself captivated by the old doors and what may lie behind them.

The Taste of Things — you’ll want to savour every morsel again and again

Juliette Binoche in The Taste of Things. Image: Carole Bethuel / European Film Festival

This took me by surprise. My colleague Emilie Gambade, editor of Maverick Life, asked me if I’d like to review a French movie. I was put in touch with a film festival director who sent me a link, and that evening we sat and watched The Taste of Things, a film as exquisite as the finest pâté.

The surprise was not that the film was so wonderful — it was. It was how much I enjoyed writing about it. I left film criticism behind me many years ago, but there was a time when I did that much more than writing about food. So, when we move back to Cape Town in 2025, I hope to take it up again.

But wait, there’s more

Anna Trapido’s take on Gqeberha’s/Port Elizabeth's Hong Kong chicken, which is hardly known beyond the city where it is adored. (Photos: Anna Trapido)

My colleagues were very generous to me in 2024 (and by extension to you), writing many great stories. Not least, Anna Trapido, who crowned the food writing year with her superb series on Gqeberha/Port Elizabeth’s little known foodie secret — Hong Kong Chicken. There was a sequel, and then another, great reading!

There were many other lovely pieces by Anna, but my favourite was this one about a Texas BBQ in Soweto.

Another of my favourite stories of the year was Ray Mahlaka’s cheeky claim that Soweto was the real home of the Bunny Chow, and my Durban friend and colleague Wanda Hennig’s resounding rebuttal, Bunny Chow — Durban’s unique culinary gift to the world.

And finally, in France, Marita van der Vyver unearthed a fascinating story about a South African-born chef who has a Michelin-starred restaurant in a surprisingly Afrikaans corner of the French countryside. It’s not JAN.

My food year had begun, in early January, with chef Kobus van der Merwe responding to my suggestion to write down his frustrations and anxieties over how the Eat Out awards had been handled and judged the previous year. He did so with aplomb, and we duly published it. The ultimate upshot was the postponement of the annual awards, which should have taken place last month, to the first quarter of 2025.

Let’s watch that space as we enter the new year. DM

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