Long before recipes were written down, bookmarked or saved to phones, much of our culinary knowledge travelled differently: from grandmother to grandchild, through watching, tasting and learning by hand.
It’s this kind of knowledge that sits at the heart of Matriarchs, The LivingRoom at Summerhill Guest Estate’s ongoing series celebrating the women who have carried South Africa’s food traditions across generations. For its second edition on August 23, chef Johannes Richter and his team turn their attention to Zulu culinary heritage, guided by 64-year-old Thandi Mchunu.
Mchunu, grandmother of Summerhill Guest Estate manager Uluthando Mandlana, was raised by her grandparents in Hillcrest and now lives with her family in Molweni. Her own culinary education began in her grandmother’s kitchen, where recipes weren’t necessarily measured or recorded, but learnt through repetition and experience.
For Matriarchs, Mchunu joins Richter and The LivingRoom team in the kitchen to share the dishes, ingredients and techniques that have shaped her understanding of Zulu cooking. Rather than simply recreating her recipes, the chefs will use that knowledge as the starting point for a five-course Sunday lunch exploring the food and culinary traditions of KwaZulu-Natal.
The meal will be accompanied by an optional beverage pairing devised by front-of-house manager and sommelier Johanna Richter, combining South African wines, cocktails and nonalcoholic drinks with the flavours of the menu.
The series began in March with 94-year-old Dolly Govender, great-grandmother of The LivingRoom chef saucier Antonio Porras. That first edition explored Durban Indian food, with Govender sharing her knowledge of traditional spice preparation, Durban-style curries and heritage desserts with the restaurant’s kitchen team.
More than a series of collaborative lunches, Matriarchs is intended as a living archive of South African food knowledge. Mothers, gogos and aunties are invited into the professional kitchen to cook alongside The LivingRoom’s young chefs, passing on techniques and stories that might otherwise remain within individual families. Each collaboration is also documented through film and photography.
It’s a reversal of the usual chef-led dining experience. Here, the professional kitchen isn’t positioned as the ultimate authority. Instead, the chefs become students, learning from women whose expertise was built over decades of cooking for families and communities rather than restaurant dining rooms.
That feels particularly significant in a country where so much culinary history has been preserved not in cookbooks, but in memory. Matriarchs give some of those memories a place to be shared, recorded and, most importantly, tasted.
The five-course Matriarchs’ lunch takes place at The LivingRoom at Summerhill Guest Estate on Sunday, August 23. The menu is priced at R650 per person, or R1,050 with the optional beverage pairing.
For reservations, book on Dineplan.
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