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March 28th marks the start of Restaurant Week, a culinary event that allows food lovers to enjoy exclusive menus at discounted prices.
Serving dishes: Math Restaurant owner Puleng Mathabatha. Picture: math.jhb/Instagram
March 28th marks the start of Restaurant Week, which is a culinary event where food lovers can enjoy exclusive menus at discounted prices from participating restaurants, offering a chance to experience a diverse range of dining options.
“I haven’t taken advantage of it,” Math Restaurant owner, Puleng Mathabatha, tells The Citizen.
“But in the restaurant business, the win is getting feet through the door, and often these help get dinners to the restaurants on weekdays and times in the days that are not busy,” he avers.
Located at Waterfall Corner in Midrand, Mathabatha has been running the eatery since last May. He says the Restaurant Week campaign, which runs from 28 March to 4 May, is a help to eateries.
“So as an avid supporter of Restaurant Week, I definitely think it plays its part in pushing restaurant culture,” he said.
Math Restaurant is participating in Restaurant Week where they will offer specials to foodies.
One of the first things you see when you walk into Math Restaurant is a painting commissioned by Mathabatha, which pays homage to his late father and his patrons.
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A home away from home
The interior has the ideal warmth to cater for families, while the exterior is conducive to youthful, loud chatter.
A Black Panther-esque art piece sits at the centre of what he describes as the gather table, which is the only circular table in the restaurant.
“If you’re friends or family, for six or more people, come, and we do family sharing style. Instead of the usual plates, you’d have everything deconstructed family-wise so you share,” he said.
“I guess that’s the ancestors in a symbolic way,” he says about the art piece on the round table.
Mathabatha is aesthetically conscious and hands-on with the look and feel of the place.
He had the chairs custom-made and designed them himself. Regarding the lighting that hangs at the centre of the restaurant, he said, “I did a little model with an electrician and designed it.”
The lights look like a wave, depending on which side of the eatery you’re looking from.
“It’s an interesting, cute way to do light fixtures, which I did myself with a little model with Styrofoam and wooden sticks,” he explained.
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Inside Math
Mathabatha asked artist Dustin August to create the painting that speaks to how Mathis a space where people can gather to break bread and enjoy themselves as family and friends – essentially a home away from home.
On the far left side of the wall are faceless human figures holding hands, with their heads facing in opposite directions.
“It’s supposed to symbolise how our journeys are intertwined. Clearly the two people are walking apart, but they still have their hands together. My dad’s journey and mine were different, but it’s still in business.”
He adds: “There’s a heart between them; I don’t know if that was intentional.” The rest of the artwork shows other human-like figures dining around tables.
The artwork’s name, When We Gather, was adopted as the restaurant’s tagline. “This is who we are, this is what we’re trying to create — a space to gather,” he said.
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Born into business
Such is the entrepreneurial spirit in his family that when the 30-year-old started working, his mother bemoaned his salary.
“She was like, ‘why are you earning that much, rather come work for one of our businesses or open a business,” he said.
He describes his late father as a quiet man who was intuitive for business and a visionary of sorts.
His family had a hardware shop in the community, a trucking company and an investment company that purchased land.
The hardware in Lebowakgomo was named Math, and a young Mathabatha didn’t know where the name came from. He later realised that most of the family businesses were named after those who came before them.
“Even at our farm, the camps are named after my great-grand fathers.” He was guided by the same modus operandi when naming his entrepreneurial venture.
“I never really wanted to name anything after myself, but I realised it’s not about me; it’s about the people who came before me.”
This isn’t his first rodeo though. He previously owned a franchise and experience taught him that “people want things that they can relate to.”
While studying financial science at Tuks, he helped people organise events and launch restaurants, some of which are still operational.
“When I got the opportunity [to own a franchise], I thought that’s a good way to learn.”
Math is the only black owned eatery that is self-funded at Waterfall.
It’s been less than a year since Math opened its doors, and Mathabatha says it hasn’t been easy trying to balance out a variety of things.
He uses the analogy of the restaurant being a baby and how he has had to ensure the baby is well-fed and taken care of in its early stages.
“It’s ensuring that the baby is eating healthy food constantly, something you don’t do once and think things are okay,” he said.
He emphasised the importance of ensuring that workers were happy, marketing, and handling things efficiently.
“People can steal your stock, people can send away customers.
“Building the shop was so challenging, but I think I had a tougher skin or a little more spirit to kind of understand that I had to do it.”
“The baby will be fine eventually; after I got through the hard parts and building the shop, the doors are open.”
The soft-spoken entrepreneur says he’s “very stern. I don’t shout, but I have a conversation with people and tell them how I feel, which is more effective than shouting and screaming,” avers the owner.
He said the most challenging thing about restaurants was neither the food nor the gross margins, but people. His financial science qualification has been effectively applied in his entrepreneurial endeavours.
“It’s important to be in a kind of position where you understand how money moves. Also how to access money and how to prioritise funding,” said Mathabatha.
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The Math menu
He has loved food from a young age. “Growing up I used to watch BBC Food,” he said.
Even when it’s difficult to find ingredients like tarragon in Lebowakgomo, he tries to make the food he sees on TV. A cousin who was a chef also inspired him through the dishes he would prepare when he visited.
Mathabatha spent some time in Singapore last year experiencing their food.
“I feel like we should have a lot more Michelin star restaurants in South Africa; they give them out as peanuts in other countries, not Africa,” he said. He visited the restaurants, including the fourth-rated best bar in the world.
“I feel we have something to offer as well.”
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