Chef Phil Khoza's turned his love for traditional food into a business. Picture Hein Kaiser
He’s a five-star chef and has cooked for celebrities, politicians, and various plumed individuals. Chef Phil Khoza spent twenty-five years working in the kitchens of luxury restaurants and high-end hotels.
His career was going from strength to strength. That is, until the pandemic had its way with him. And not in the way you’d expect. The hotel where Khoza worked was a designated quarantine center during the outbreak of the virus. This meant that for ten months he had to rustle up around a thousand meals per day and that just about consumed his days. Until he had an idea.
To feed so many people, pre-preparation was the ideal and over time he started pre-preparing meals, freezing them, and slowly easing the pressure on himself and his colleagues in the kitchen. “We only prepared breakfast each day,” Khoza recalled, “since everything else was already stored in the deep freeze.”
The success of the endeavour also germinated a new idea, and its spawn happenstance coincided with the venue commencing retrenchments of some of his staff. “I was opposed to the layoffs,” he said, “and butted heads with management frequently.” Khoza chose to leave and pursue his dream of opening a restaurant that serves traditional African meals, moving away from the Eurocentric dishes he was accustomed to preparing.
“African traditional dishes, however, take hours to prepare properly,” said Khoza. “But the trial runs I had with prepping thousands of meals, freezing them and cutting service times for customers proved invaluable.” His casual Midrand based eatery managed to serve hot meals within 15 minutes, traditional food that would have otherwise taken an eternity to cook up.
Then, another idea struck him. What about people who don’t frequent his restaurant, potential customers who lead busy lives in suburbia and end up buying frozen microwave dinners to heat and eat. “The options are currently limited,” he said, “but I plan to change that soon.” Khoza made work of his idea and started pitching it to retailers more than a year ago; the sweat paid off.
“To reach the pitching stage, I traveled the country, visiting families from Cape Town to Limpopo, collecting traditional recipes, modernising them, and testing their freeze-ability.”
It was a longish journey, but he got a seat at the table and Pick n Pay will be stocking his range of Unorthodox Chef frozen traditional meals in Gauteng from next month. He’s also in discissions with the Shoprite Checkers group.
I chose the name Unorthodox Chef because my dishes are distinct from those of a typical chef.
People craving traditional African cuisine no longer need to visit the aunt at the taxi rank with her boiling cast iron pots, a questionable food caravan, or a roadside stall for dombolo dumplings, Mala Mogodu (tripe), cow trotters, or three-bean stew. Khoza’s bringing chicken feet and cow’s liver along with other continental delicacies like Joffa Rice to a supermarket freezer. “We aim to offer affordable meals at prices comparable to those sold by street vendors.”
By his side is Busisiwe Cebekhulu who manages operations for the business from their massive industrial kitchen in Midrand. In keeping with Khoza’s non-traditional and unorthodox approach, Cebekhulu’s a hire from a completely different industry, showbusiness. Her outsider’s view excites and inspires him. He has surrounded himself with energetic young chefs and staff he admires. “It’s all about creating the business and then passing the baton to the next generation,” he shared.
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