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South African Chef Reinvents Humble Home Dishes
Don’t go to Cape Town for tapas. Head to Khayelitsha township for ‘running chicken’
Umqa. Umleqwa. Umngqusho. While you’d be hard-pressed to find these items on your average South African restaurant menu, chef Abigail Mbalo-Mokoena has garnered a reputation for reinventing such humble home dishes at her restaurant, 4Roomed eKasi Culture, in Khayelitsha township, about 19 miles outside of Cape Town.
Mbalo-Mokoena says she wants the world to know that South African food is more than shisa nyama (a township term for braai, or barbecue). “My restaurant is a platform to rewrite the old narrative,” she says.
Mbalo-Mokoena, 42, defines South African township cuisine as a culturally diverse amalgam of Cape Malay, Indian, and other influences that have impacted Black and indigenous foods, and vice versa. “Under apartheid, we grew up separate from our neighbors, but we shared and exchanged ideas. In fact, I grew up thinking curry was a Black dish,” she says with a chuckle.
At 4Roomed, which she opened with her husband and business partner, Sam Mokoena, in 2016, seasonal vegetables and herbs are incorporated into elegant representations of traditional foods. The country’s most basic and beloved staple, white maize porridge, is whipped with roasted butternut squash (together known as umqa), seasoned with a hint of nutmeg and truffle oil, left to set, and served warm in thick squares. Mature free-range chicken, known by the delightful colloquialism “running chicken,” or umleqwa, is slow-cooked in a tagine. Hominy, boiled in the traditional way with speckled beans until tender (umngqusho), is enriched with a lavish swirl of coconut cream and fresh tarragon. Then there’s a board piled with sliced medium-rare beef. “This represents our traditional functions, which usually involve a ceremonial slaughtering,” says Mbalo-Mokoena.
It’s hard to imagine 4Roomed sitting alongside the Italian and tapas eateries in Cape Town that resemble the dining scene in, say, New York or London.
“When the kids walk in…
