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Hue Café: A hidden sanctuary of soul, spice and storytelling in the heart of Durban

Hue Café welcome: Home. Humility. Harvest. (Photo: Wanda Hennig)

2 May 2025

‘Mine host’ at Hue Café, the city’s hottest new little coffee, culinary, art and music space, is a delightful down-to-earth actor-entrepreneur with a backstory waiting to be told and his flavoursome slow-cooked goat stew waiting to be eaten.

Home. Humility. Harvest. These are the words that greet you, etched on the peekaboo tangerine perspex Hue Café sign that hangs from the veranda beam and welcomes you when you arrive at the restored single-storey old house, which is easier not to find than to happen upon, even when you have the address and you’re looking for it.

Inside, the décor is eclectic. A chandelier. Velvet couches. Stacks of books: art, philosophy, psychology, spirituality, literary. Out back, a cool enclosed garden that works equally well for diners and for jazz performances. The coffee is from Manna Roastery in Hilton. The sourdough for the club and chicken mayo sandwiches is from Good: Bread and Stuff.

This is Lindah Majola’s place. In the kitchen, his mom, Zandile Ngcobo, is prepping and plating orders and watching over the gently simmering goat stew along with sidekick cook, Ongezwe Mkhalane, both of them trained by Majola.

The aromatic goat, slow-cooked with paprika, dhaniya and mother-in-law garam masala (cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, cloves, bay leaves, star anise and peppercorns) is a menu favourite. Goat from the Victoria Street Fish and Goat Market.

“We use a tomato base,” says Majola. It is served with chakalaka and steamed bread. “He taught me how to cook the goat stew,” Ngcobo says, shy pride and love sparking her smile when she looks at him. “But the dombolo is mine, I taught him that,” she laughs.

“And he cooks the mutton biryani when it’s on the menu,” she adds. Quick to give credit as due to her actor-entrepreneur-chef son.

The granola is ordered in: home-made and delivered, as is the carrot cake. There are sweetcorn fritters with hummus. Carrot bread with espresso butter and jam. A caprese salad. A hearty munch-into smash burger. And then the favourites from when his culinary journey began from a trailer, before he went viral on TikTok then landed his first acting role: the signature beef cheesesteak, chicken cheesesteak and wings served with chips.

The chalked-up café menu changes to reflect specials as they are added. (Photo: Wanda Hennig)

In brief, Majola’s journey as he tells it began when his grandparents took responsibility for him as a kid and he went to live with them in Bonela, Cato Manor. He was sent to Hunt Road Secondary School (from 2010 to 2014). It happens to be my Glenwood voting station, a short walk from where I live in a cul-de-sac off King Dinuzulu Road (formerly Berea) and I know the school to have had a chequered history dating way back.

“There were a lot of troubled kids,” he says about his time there. “Drug abuse. Teen pregnancies. No extramural activities. Short-staffed. It’s better now, I know, than it was then. But even then, there were some wonderful people. Teachers who were patient with us. And I used to tell myself, if I could make it there, I could make it anywhere…”

There were no funds when he matriculated to send him to university. Having said that, Hunt Road school is a couple of blocks from the Durban University of Technology (DUT) on which he had — initially without much sense of direction — set his sights. So he got a job. “At a call centre doing telesales.”

Working at the call centre, a spark was ignited that would develop into a passion for acting. “I’d get into characters on my calls.” Some days he’d be an Afrikaans man. Other days he’d be “Vanessa”.

“I enjoyed it. And a lot of the people I spoke to got into it, appreciated it…”

While working at the call centre, he also developed an interest in food and catering.

“I was home more at my gran’s, and having a job I could afford to buy ingredients. I started experimenting and developing a passion for cooking and food.”

He decided that maybe he should study hospitality at DUC and started saving with a purpose.

With a small nest egg, Majola enrolled for the three-year National Diploma in Catering Management. He graduated cum laude, “So they paid me back 75% of my fees, which translated into a bursary.”

‘Mine host’ at Hue Café, actor-chef Lindah Majola. (Photo: Wanda Hennig)

While at DUT, he helped himself financially by waking up early, making sandwiches and offering them for sale at the campus entrance.

“For many students, I think it was their only option. They would all be sold out by 8am.”

His catering internship was at Sun International. Then, on graduating, he got a job as a commis chef at the Hilton in Sandton and hung in there for a few months.

“But Joburg, back then, was too much for me. Being away from my grandmother. It was a dark and depressing time.”

If you Google it, articles pop up where Majola talks about his challenges as a young gay man. The 29-year-old tells me he is now comfortable, at ease, with his sexuality. But back then, he resigned after a few months, returned to Durban and got a job at Paul’s Homemade Ice Cream on Florida Road.

“DUT had been extremely good for me,” he says. Knowing this inspired him. As soon as he’d saved enough, he bought a small food trailer with a two-plate gas stove, a two-basin deep fryer and a flat-top grill. He decorated it with photocopied black-and-white pics of “all my idols, the people I loved”: Brenda Fassie, Hector Pieterson, Grace Jones, other artists… And set up in business outside DUT, helped by his sister who was just out of school.

Carrot cake and cocktails. Hue has it all. (Photo: Wanda Hennig)

It was just starting to do well. Then Covid came. DUT and everything else closed down.

Doom. Gloom. For many, and initially for Majola, it was both of these.

But his life till then had been defined by making upsides out of downsides. Finding opportunity in adversity. Turning life’s lemons into lemonade.

He moved his food trailer to where he was living with his grandmother.

“Then came the exciting part,” he says.

He had hit upon and begun to hone his acting skills at the call centre.

“I started using TikTok to do satirical monologues, to tell jokes, to share stories about running my food trailer. I don’t know how or why, but it went viral.”

If you look at his Instagram you’ll see he has close to 320,000 followers. He had more than 300,000 on TikTok when it was still running.

“It led me to say, I need to translate this into the food.”

As soon as he could, given Covid’s constraints, with his gran helping him this time, he was back in business.

“My grandmother and I were preparing and selling quick and easy fast and popular food, and doing really well.”

Majola would be up at 6am, at the market at 6.30am, back home and ready to open at 8am. TikTok was buzzing. Orders were coming. Demand was soaring. Especially well received were his beef cheesesteak and chicken cheesesteak, which have made their way on to the menu at Hue Café.

“And the wings. And the fried chips. People loved them.”

The goat stew served with chakalaka and dombolo and the Hue Café mutton biryani. (Photo: Wanda Hennig)

In 2022, thanks to TikTok, he landed his first acting role. When I Google it, I read: “Lindah Majola, a popular TikTok star from Durban, made his acting debut as Langa in the Showmax original telenovela, The Wife. Majola’s transition to acting was notable, as he gained fame through his viral TikTok content during the lockdown.”

“Langa,” his role, “was a flamboyant drama queen of note,” he tells me. The role meant he had to leave his little trailer and move to Joburg. His gran and her friend, meanwhile, took over and ran the little business.

The show over and back in Durban a year or so later, he was offered another role. In Uzalo, on SABC1. Uzalo has been ongoing since 2015 and was consistently the most watched TV show/soapie in South Africa in 2024. “Uzalo airs weekdays at 8.30pm. The show’s most-viewed episode for 2024 aired on 27 March when 5.7-million South Africans tuned in,” I read on TechCentral.

“I play Mzamo, a boy from Ndlende, a made-up township, who comes to KwaMashu to build his career in the entertainment industry.” He films two to three days a week, in KwaMashu, Newlands, Inanda. In between, he is at Hue Café. Which is a story in itself.

The chicken cheesesteak and chips, which harks back to Majola’s food trailer days. (Photo: Wanda Hennig)

The time came when ongoing theft gave him little option but to shutter the trailer.

“I was looking for a new home, came across this house on the internet and contacted the realtor. Homeless people had occupied it. It was dilapidated. Plants were growing from the roof, which was leaking. It truly was a disgusting mess, but I saw something in it.”

With just the deposit, not much of a plan and an ignorance-is-bliss attitude, he committed to the purchase.

“I didn’t realise all the unseen expenses. All the money I’d saved went on lawyers, transfers, things I had never considered.”

He had the rundown house and was wondering what to do next…

“Then this man (Nkululeko) Dada Maseko saw me online. I didn’t know him but he got his team to reach out. They arrived and said they were there to donate renovations, to help me set up.”

When I Google it, I find an article on Joburg-based Nkululeko “Dada” Maseko, a hospitality entrepreneur and owner of contemporary fusion dining destination, Brown Sugar Oceans in Umhlanga Oceans Mall. The article tells me Maseko had decided to celebrate the first anniversary of his restaurant, Brown Sugar, by helping “enhance and renovate the establishment of actor and young entrepreneur, Lindah Majola…”.

“His construction team arrived. They worked on the place. Fixed the walls, the roof, did the back yard, all the basic renovations. It was huge.” A life-saver. “Within three months we were ready to open.”

A muesli and cappuccino breakfast option. (Photo: Wanda Hennig)

Majola launched with what he called The Kitchen Club in July 2024, a communal fine-dining experience. He shows me pics on his phone of a formal and beautifully laid table snaking through what is now the café interior with its velvet sofa, cool mismatched tables, chairs and benches; items of furniture donated or picked up at thrift stores. The book collection was gifted to Majola for Hue by well-known Durban cultural creative, Russel Hlongwane, “a friend who travels the world”.

For The Kitchen Club, “people would book and pay online. We’d cater for 40. Cook for them.” It was popular. But Majola had bigger ideas. Initially he wanted a breakfast and brunch café. But customer demand called for extended hours and menu options.

“I wanted a place where creatives could gather and engage. A ground for conversation. There are many spaces around the city where people come — and leave. Here, people can come, engage, read art books, listen to live jazz performances.”

He also runs Hue Café as an art gallery, with art openings, where he curates the exhibitions.

“Instead of going to see, eat, watch and leave, the idea behind Hue is for people to stay and engage. I don’t know if that was my initial intention, but it’s what has evolved.”

And he likes how it has evolved and is continuing to evolve.

The Hue Café munch-on-me “smash burger”. (Photo: Wanda Hennig)

Hue Café is both hidden away and in one of Durban’s most happening locations.

It is less than a 10-minute walk from Durban’s coolest food and cultural hub at the bottom of Florida Road that is home to Glenwood Bakery Morningside, Ike’s Books, the Pink Duck and Dukkah Restaurant.

Cut across from Florida into Lilian Ngoyi Road and you have Bean Bag Jazz Lounge (creating new legends where the legendary Bean Bag Bohemia used to be), Le Pizzeria 24 (open 24/7) and upscale and hugely popular Zai restaurant (authentic Argentinian grill-house). The hot and happening trio operate in tandem, are tagged Zai Precinct, and hum — always lines of cars — literally morning, noon and night. Do they ever close?

I wouldn’t have known that Hue Café was in a hidden-away spot down a side alley between Bean Bag and Zai had I not asked an urbane and helpful “bouncer” outside Bean Bag on my third circling of the block, wondering where this new venue for a friend’s monthly non-dancers “dance club” could be.

Hue Café welcome: Home. Humility. Harvest. (Photo: Wanda Hennig)

Back to home, humility and harvest, all intertwined at Lindah Majola’s Hue.

His mom previously worked in security in Inanda, where she and his dad live. Now, she is in the kitchen and loving it. His gran and grandpa — “Gogo and Mkhulu” — do the Hue Café upkeep and maintenance.

Humility comes to mind in conversation with Majola. He’s down to earth. Open. Authentic. We talked about real stuff.

“A lot of people are afraid of art spaces. They think they don’t belong,” he tells me at one point. He wants people to come, stay, hang their art, work on their laptops, listen to music, chat to the artists. To belong.

And harvest.

“When it comes to putting together the menu, we have limited space and equipment, so the menu is small but there’s a feeling of being at home,” he says. The goat stew recipe is an adaptation of one he got from his author-sangoma friend, Nokulinda Mkhize-Horwood, who launched her book, Kitchen Wisdom, at Hue Café.

He is harvesting and sharing creative talent. Giving it a home. Feeding it. Creating a café of many hues. DM

Follow lindah_majola and Hue Café on Instagram. Follow Lindah Majola and Hue Café on Facebook.

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