Women Chefs
INSPIRATIONAL WOMEN CHEFS IN MAKERS VALLEY – WOMANDLA!
Mpho Phalane
Mpho grew up in Protea North, Soweto, raised by her mother who is a social worker. When she left school, her chosen career was advertising. However, although successful in that role, Mpho says there was always something ‘niggling’ within her. She realised that she was not fulfilling her true purpose and would ‘escape into cooking’ each day. She began to cook for her friends, she loved ‘putting on the whole show’, and gradually people began asking her to cater for private parties and events such as fashion shows.
Mpho was growing her catering business at the same time as continuing her fulltime advertising career, but she soon realised she would have to make a choice. She decided to leave the security of her corporate job and plunge into cooking fulltime. Cooking at the UJ Arts Centre in Milpark was Mpho’s next step. However as she loves to be completely ‘hands on’, Mpho’s aim was to have her own restaurant. When she heard of a venue in Victoria Yards, she invested everything she had, and opened for business in late 2018. She says that opening her own establishment was acknowledging that what makes her ‘heart sing’ is cooking – hence the name Food I Love You. Throughout 2019, Food I Love You grew as an ‘occasional restaurant’ and catering company, then COVID-19 and associated lockdown happened. Victoria Yards was temporarily closed and Food I Love You could not operate. Mpho was devastated.
Concerned friends from within Makers Valley suggested that she might want to make her kitchen available for the Food Kitchen. Mpho freely admits that opening her kitchen to cook for the people of Makers Valley has helped her to gain perspective, and even find meaning in the COVID-19 challenges. She says that the ‘pause’ has enabled many people, herself included, to assess what is really valuable in their lives, to empathise with those less fortunate, and to find meaning and joy in helping others.
Nonhlanhla Godole
Noni was brought up in rural Eastern Cape by her ukhokho (great-grandmother), a traditional healer who believed that no one was too young to ‘put a pot on the stove’. Noni says for as long as she can remember she has been ‘in love with cooking’. Her ukhokho grew vegetables, harvested indigenous plants, ground wheat for bread, and made the samp and mealie meal for the household. Noni learned to love these traditional ways of living and cooking, so when she was suddenly brought to Johannesburg to live with her mother, she was heartbroken.
By the time she was a young adult, Noni had endured many painful life changes, but through all of these, the activity that continued to bring her joy was cooking. She would cook for friends using familiar ingredients such as amaranth, pumpkin leaves and many indigenous plants. The act of cooking became Noni’s personal healing journey, and after several false career starts, she was able to ‘grow into her full purpose’ and train as a chef at culinary school.
Noni had only just started to develop her catering business in partnership with ForReal when COVID-19 hit South Africa. She was already familiar with Makers Valley, so when she was asked by ForReal’s Ilka Stein to cook for the Food Kitchen she immediately agreed. Her first contribution was preparing 60 liters of soup in her own kitchen. Since then she cooks for hundreds of people every Sunday at Victoria Yards. Noni believes that the love she puts into the food she cooks for Makers Valley people helps them to cope with the hardships they are currently facing.
Both Mpho and Noni freely admit that in giving of themselves to the people of Makers Valley, they have found their own courage and healing.
