At The LivingRoom at Summerhill Guest Estate, near Pinetown, the kitchen has recently been welcoming a different kind of guest. Not visiting chefs or guest sommeliers, but mothers, grandmothers, aunties and gogos whose recipes have quietly shaped South Africa’s culinary landscape for decades.
The restaurant, led by chef Johannes Richter, has launched a new Sunday lunch series, Matriarchs — Preserving the Flavours of Our Heritage.
The idea is simple but thoughtful. Invite the women who have carried family food traditions for generations into the kitchen and allow their knowledge to guide the process. The result is a Sunday lunch menu that draws directly from their recipes, techniques and food memories.
Rather than treating heritage cooking as something to be archived, the series approaches it as living knowledge. Each gathering centres on a different cultural tradition and begins with a day spent cooking alongside the restaurant’s team.
These sessions are documented through film and photography while younger chefs work directly with the matriarchs to learn the small, instinctive details that rarely make it into written recipes.
The first event, held on March 8, featured Dolly Govender, a 94-year-old Durban Indian matriarch and the great-grandmother of The LivingRoom’s chef saucier, Antonio Porras.
In the days leading up to the lunch, Govender spent time in the kitchen with Richter and his team, demonstrating how she prepares spice blends, builds the base of a Durban-style curry and approaches traditional sweets.
The menu that followed drew directly from her cooking. Guests were served dishes such as sugar beans with dhania and puri, fish curry with pickled brinjal and dahl, and chicken curry presented family-style.
Desserts leaned into the aromatic sweetness typical of Durban Indian kitchens, including sojee scented with black cardamom and macadamia, as well as gulgula paired with semiya payasam.
For Richter and the team the process offered more than inspiration. It was also a practical lesson in the subtle techniques that underpin many home kitchens.
“It was incredibly inspiring for the entire team,” says Richter. “We gained real insight into things such as mixing masalas, roasting spices and understanding the nuances between different curries.”
Govender’s influence extended to the pastry side of the kitchen as well, where spices such as cardamom and cinnamon feature prominently in traditional desserts.
The LivingRoom’s chefs translated these ideas through their own culinary lens, combining the original flavours with the restaurant’s more contemporary approach to plating and technique.
“The creative process of taking that knowledge and translating it into a menu was amazing,” Richter explains. “We’re able to honour those flavours and that heritage while framing them in a way that feels contemporary.”
The lunches are accompanied by a beverage selection curated by Johanna Richter, pairing each menu with South African wines, cocktails and carefully considered non-alcoholic options.
For the restaurant, the series is also about acknowledgement. The participating matriarchs are hosted as guests of honour at the lunches and compensated for the time and knowledge they share. Govender attended the inaugural event with her family seated among the guests, watching the dishes she had helped shape return to the table in a new context.
Future editions of the Matriarchs series will continue to explore different culinary traditions from across South Africa. In a country where so much food knowledge still lives in home kitchens rather than cookbooks, the project offers a way of bringing those stories into the open, one Sunday lunch at a time.
