Those of you guys know why British chefs battled against each other to present the best traditional British food for Queen Elizabeth’s birthday, must have understood the importance of preparing the best from the local produce. This importance of chefs is felt by many chefs around the world and especially by those who feel that regional food is shadowed by the cuisine of a ‘foreign country’.
I deliberately use the word ‘foreign’ as a recent feature of a ‘black chef’ expresses concern over the sinking regional foods in South Africa, under the established hold of ‘foreign cooks’. Bastion executive chef Kenny Ngubane gives a clear discrimination of African foods in the restaurants in Africa, as he shows that 80 percent of the foods served in the restaurants are foreign while only 20 percent in African. As per Ngubane, when tourists come to South Africa they eat their home food in a foreign country, when they come to an African restaurant expecting the availability of the contrary. Ngubane says:
When we go China we want to eat noodles. When we go to India we want to eat rice. When visitors come to South Africa, they want South African food.
There are some South African chefs who have started to realize the importance of local foods and have started serving them in place of ‘foreign foods’. But as per the chef a lot has to be done to make the culinary industry in Africa to understand the importance of serving local foods to the ‘foreign customers’ and gradually put it on the menu. The chef knows that the change will be a gradual process and therefore he puts it:
If I’m doing an African menu, I will introduce it slowly – kind of like the way our democracy came into being.
