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Moses Moloi and Duncan Savage — Flavour memories meet their perfect wine match

Winemaker Duncan Savage of Savage Wines. Left, Savage Red and, right, Savage White. (Photos: Supplied)

15 Nov 2024

Separately, Chef Moses Moloi and winemaker Duncan Savage are masterful composers. Paired together, their food and wine is a symphony.

South Africa’s finest food and wine producers are expanding our understanding of edible and quaffable combinations.

Moses Moloi (the chef-patron of Gigi restaurant in Johannesburg) and Duncan Savage (the eponymous winemaker at Cape Town’s Savage Wines) have never met. But they should, because their ways of working, and their epicurean output, are strikingly similar. Elegant and complex yet unpretentious and accessible, intervention is skilfully minimalist with ingredients, terroir and a South African sense of self taking centre stage.

Both Moloi and Savage are widely admired for creating focused, fresh flavours that are simultaneously regionally specific and world-class wonderful. Both have won numerous local and international accolades affirming each artisan’s prime positions within their respective spaces.

Savage has regularly received stellar wine ratings in über-prestigious global publications such as Decanter, Wine Spectator and Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. In 2023 Moloi was listed in 85th position in the top 100 of global platform The Best Chef Awards, which also included Michelin-starred gastronomic greats such as Chef Heston Blumenthal (from The Fat Duck in Bray, England) and Chef Rasmus Munk from Alchemist in Copenhagen.

At the award ceremony (held in Yucatan, Mexico), Moloi encountered Chef Ferran Adrià (the creative force behind the late, great El Bulli modernist restaurant in Spain). It was the Catalan culinary colossus who advised Moloi to “cook who you are and where you are from”. These wise words influenced the Botshabelo-born chef, who had previously focused on Franco-Asian fusion food, to explore his alimentary identity. Since this encounter, he has highlighted the South African flavour repertoire in almost all his work.

Chef Moses Moloi of Gigi Restaurant. (Photo: RJ Van Spaandonk)

Chef Moloi is not in the business of creating museum pieces. He is not a Luddite rejecting modern equipment or a foodie fascist denying the role of outside influences. Just as Ferran Adrià is not cooking as his grandmother once did, but rather attempting to say something about the contemporary Catalan experience, so it is with Moses Moloi.

He says: “I don’t want to mess around with original flavour but at the same time it’s 2024 and we have this amazing establishment, and people’s lives and palates have changed somewhat so you have to find a balance. It’s about communication. Diners should taste and then say ‘this reminds me of my granny or my aunt’ from wherever it might be in South Africa; that’s the idea. That’s the goal that you can somehow relate to the flavour profile and the stories we are trying to tell you.”

Gigi has many beautiful bottles in its state-of-the-art, temperature-controlled glass wine room, but the chef laments that “we have regulars who love a particular red wine and no matter what they are eating they only want that. We have to come to the table and say, ‘how about this with that dish? Why not try something else?’. It’s something we need to work on… There is a massive gap to educate our people… There are so many people with access to money, but their palates are not well trained. They don’t know what wine works with what food.”

Moloi senses a reticence when it comes to pairing wine with traditional tastes because “I think South Africans are scared of trying food they know with wine. Who said mala mogodu [tripe and intestines] or tshotlho [pulled beef] can’t be paired with wines? We need to explore and find ways to support that voyage of discovery.”

An early summer, lingering lunch in the al fresco area at Gigi seemed an ideal time and place to start on such a journey. So, we did. Savage Red (2022) was paired with ox tongue, caramelised onion petals, chakalaka, a magnificently meaty, highly reduced, silken sauce and a cloud of beautifully bouffant buttery aerated pap espuma.

Savage’s multi-award-winning Syrah is not the classic liquid refreshment for an offal dish that Moloi grew up eating at Free State family gatherings.

Winemaker Duncan Savage of Savage Wines. (Photo: Supplied)

Fortunately, the wonderful wine found favour with the traditional taste’s restaurant reconfiguration. Crisp, seared tongue crust, surrounded yielding, velvety smooth interior flesh. The slightly smoky quality in the meaty crust was accentuated by similar tastes and smells in the pap — even the most elevated, espuma-ed maize meal porridge is infused with the charred flavours of the isikhokho se papa layer catching at the bottom of the pot. Simply seasoned, each bite underscored the offal’s umami intensity, the pap’s purity and the chef’s minimalist skill. The gentle glow of chakalaka embraced the wine’s generous floral, sweet, sour, spiced plum and mulberry-laden loveliness.

Savage Red’s piquant white pepper modified the rich, fatty, smoky tongue tastes. Complex tannins and a savoury, almost meaty, minerality brought enough presence to blend with but not dominate each South African specific bite and sip.

Winemaker Duncan Savage of Savage Wines. Left, Savage Red and, right, Savage White. (Photos: Supplied)

Identity involves influences and experiences outside of biological ancestry. Moloi says that one of his most formative food encounters was when “I got an internship at the Marine Hotel in Cape Town. I was this young boy from the Free State. I spoke Afrikaans and I am fairly light, so the Coloureds in the kitchen thought I was one of them. They took me into their homes. I loved it. They showed me a different world and a different way to make flavour. The way they layer spices. It’s beautiful. It’s something you need to be taught the right way. On Sundays we would go to church and then come back, and they’d put this big cast iron pot on a fire. I learnt so much by being among them.”

This influential experience (and school-days encounters with other Free State flavours) has marinated into Moloi’s food profile, appearing on his plates as ginger and salmon fish cakes with papaya salad, peanuts, sweet potato fritters and pickled fish dressing. The fritters “are influenced by my time in the Free State when I had a few Afrikaans mates who would invite me to their houses and their grandmothers would make ouma’s pampoen poffertjies”.

The dressing is his take on traditional Cape Easter pickled fish, of which he says: “It was Good Friday, and I was making pickled fish, and I left it on the stove and forgot it for so long that it reduced significantly. So, I blended it, and this intensely flavoured dressing was the result.” The sweet, sour, spiced condiment is concentrated Cape Creole flavour making it an ideal companion to the expressive naartjie zest, pineapple honeyed acidity of Savage White (2023).

The chef’s “homage to all those people in the Cape who taught me about their flavours” creates all the right compare and contrast friendships with the blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon because “it all comes together with the flavour packed Cape spiced sauce, the richness of the fish, the salty crunch of nuts and the sweetness of the papaya. I think that it works well. I think that those guys in the Cape that I worked with many years ago would be proud that I have been able to take something of my Free State story in the pumpkin poffertjies and their story and combine them on a plate … once paired together with the wine it makes a lot of sense. Which is very beautiful.”

Gigi floor manager Chule Mabunu (whom the chef refers to as “Mr Ocean” because he grew up in Port Alfred) joined the table just as the Savage White and fish cakes arrived. Confessing that his mother used to bribe him in from the beach with promises of fish cakes, Mr Ocean’s maritime instincts led him to conclude that the wine conjured up “ocean humidity in the air. Saltiness that goes well with the fried fish cakes and the wine’s sweetness, those apricot flavours, that crispness reminds me of being on the beach. Eating this meal and drinking this wine, it makes me feel like I have come a long way … but it is still familiar. There is something about the combination that brings to mind sand everywhere, taking a shower in the public showers. Good times.”

The much-missed, late Cape Wine Master Allan Mullins described a different but similar Savage Sauvignon Blanc (produced for the Woolworth’s Signature range) as “an expression of maritime freedom – serve with a sea view”, which is basically a posh paraphrase of Chule’s sand and shower sentiments.

The pairings were undoubtedly exquisitely evocative and super-successful. The challenge is not local food and wine finding flavours that work well together, but rather to persuade diners and drinkers to expand their understanding of edible and quaffable combinations beyond their current comfort zones.

Obviously, it is absurd that a country, such as South Africa, with a long history of wine making does not have clear culinary conventions on how to pair its deliciously diverse local food genres with wine, but let’s look on the bright side. There is something fabulously freeing about there being no time-honoured customs compelling a diner to have Cabernet with kotas or Chardonnay with chakalaka. We are not trapped by centuries-old traditions pairing Syrah with a smiley, seven colours or isikhoko se papa. Magnificent, Mzansi matchings are ours to make. So, let’s. DM

Want more of Moses Moloi discussing his homegrown food and wine philosophy? See www.youtube.com/@foodwaysafrica

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