Chef Khoza opens restaurant in Midrand serving traditional African dishes

A five-star chef, he has cooked for celebrities, politicians and various personalities. Chef Phil Khoza worked for twenty-five years in the kitchens of luxury restaurants and high-end hotels.

His career was going from strength to strength. Until the pandemic hit. And not in the way you might expect. The hotel where Khoza worked was a designated quarantine center during the virus outbreak. That meant he had to prepare about a thousand meals a day for ten months, which took up most of his day. Until he had an idea.

To feed so many people, prepping ahead was ideal, and over time he began preparing meals in advance, freezing them, and gradually easing the pressure on him and his colleagues in the kitchen. “We only made breakfast each day,” Khoza recalls, “because everything else was already stored in the freezer.”

From hours of preparation to 15 minutes of service

The company’s success also sparked a new idea, which coincided with the start of layoffs of some of his staff. “I was against the layoffs,” he said, “and I argued with management a lot.” Khoza chose to leave and pursue his dream of opening a restaurant that served traditional African dishes, moving away from the Eurocentric dishes he was used to preparing.

“Traditional African dishes take hours to prepare,” Khoza says. “But the trials I’ve done by preparing thousands of meals, freezing them and reducing the time it takes for customers to serve them have proven invaluable.” His casual restaurant in Midrand has managed to serve hot meals in 15 minutes, traditional dishes that would otherwise have taken forever to prepare.

“I collected traditional recipes and modernized them.

Then another idea came to him. What to do with the people who don’t frequent his restaurant, the potential customers who lead busy suburban lives and end up buying frozen meals in the microwave to heat up and eat? “The options are limited right now,” he said, “but I plan to change that soon.” Khoza developed his idea and began pitching it to retailers more than a year ago; his efforts have paid off.

“To get to the pitch stage, I travelled the country, visiting families from Cape Town to Limpopo, collecting traditional recipes, modernising them and testing their suitability for freezing.”

It’s been a long journey, but he’s secured a seat at the table and Pick n Pay will be bringing its Unorthodox Chef range of frozen traditional meals to Gauteng from next month. It is also in talks with Shoprite Checkers Group.

I chose the name Unorthodox Chef because my dishes are distinct from those of a typical chef.

Khoza brings traditional African cuisine to supermarket freezers

Fans of traditional African cuisine no longer need to visit their auntie at the taxi rank with her boiling cast iron pots, their questionable food trailer or their roadside stall selling dombolo dumplings, Mala Mogodu (tripe), cow’s feet or three-bean stew. Khoza brings chicken feet and cow’s liver and other continental specialities like joffa rice from a supermarket freezer. “Our aim is to offer affordable meals at prices comparable to those sold by street vendors.”

Alongside him is Busisiwe Cebekhulu, who runs the company’s operations from their massive industrial kitchen in Midrand. True to Khoza’s unconventional and unorthodox approach, Cebekhulu is a recruit from a completely different industry, show business. His outsider’s perspective excites and inspires him. He has surrounded himself with young, energetic chefs and staff he admires. “It’s about building the business and then passing it on to the next generation,” he explains.

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