Siba Mtongana is described as South Africa’s first global celebrity chef, was named a “food goddess”, and has been the subject of a Harvard Business School case study.
Three years ago, she and her cooking hero Nigella Lawson were among seven “food goddesses” named by Tatler Malaysia, she shared her recipe for success in Harvard’s MBA programme and was named as one of the 100 influential people on the continent by New African magazine.
Mtongana, 38, is known for her cooking show, Siba’s Table, which airs on the Food Network, is broadcast in more than 130 countries and has won five awards in the US. She put African cuisine on the map with her first book, My Table, which won two Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
Her show began in September 2013 when she started The Siba Co. A year later she was included in Oprah Winfrey’s O Power List, along with Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o, former public protector Thuli Madonsela and businesswoman Precious Moloi-Motsepe.
In the Harvard study, Mtongana, known for her “seed-to-table” food, says she cooks intuitively, having learnt from her mother and practised until she could cook without a recipe. Her parents did not think food would make a career and she considered studying law before earning a BA in food and consumer sciences at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. As a student she taught Xhosa, modelled and worked as an extra on movie sets. She also worked in a local deli and baked for the university’s snack shop.
A job as food editor on Drum magazine led to TV, with her show winning a South African Film and Television Award in its second season. It was sold to the UK for an African channel that also broadcast to the Caribbean and Middle East. It also caught another eye.
We must own and drive this movement to ensure that we incorporate our African heritage in a way that is aesthetically pleasing to locals who grew up with the food
— Siba Mtongana
Food Network producers who brought along major advertisers to shoots in Cape Town found that Mtongana had an affinity for working with them on promotions, said a review. It called her on-camera performance “assured” and said she “understood viewers needed to be entertained”.
Her restaurant, Siba — The Restaurant, at the Table Bay Hotel, opened two years ago as a pop-up and has since become permanent.
Her food is “about weaving South African flavours into world cuisine, a celebration of my heritage mixed with my travel”, she tells the FM. “I enjoy reinventing neglected staples or ingredients into incredible Sibalicious dishes that are exquisitely presented.”
Her African heritage is important. “It is not yet fully explored in the fine-dining space.” A taste of her creations includes “papizza” — a thin layer of pap as a base with pizza toppings. Mfino fritters are a traditional dish made with spinach, onion and maize meal.
“As Africans (or South Africans) we are often so open to enjoying other people’s cuisines and I do think it is only fair that we be as embracive of our own food as we are of others’, and influence others to be as excited about our food as we are with theirs.
“We must own and drive this movement to ensure that we incorporate our African heritage in a way that is aesthetically pleasing to locals who grew up with the food, and to introduce it to new audiences.”
Her brand is expanding with cookbooks and with global cooking shows. For Mtongana, expansion is about growing, scaling and creating more products and experiences locally and internationally.
The Siba Deli was meant to be her first restaurant offering, but when Covid hit, plans changed to make it a fine-dining restaurant, as people were looking for new food experiences, having been stuck at home cooking during lockdowns. A deli is her next project.
Mtongana believes awards are important as an acknowledgment and recognition of one’s contribution to the industry by peers, customers and industry bodies. And they’re good for marketing “in a very fickle industry, which is highly influenced by emotion, economic outlook or sometimes peak and low seasons”.
But as for career achievement, being a Harvard Business School case study as a pioneering chef in Africa “is still the one I hold dearest to my heart”.
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