LE BRAAI MAESTRO: Kobus Botha, South Africa’s braaimaster à la française By Christi Nortier
The announcement had been made. The 2024 Olympics would be held in Paris. So, Kobus Botha wheels his braai down the winding cobbled streets of Paris. He ducks into the gardens of Musée de Montmartre and finds the Olympic committee clinking glasses with the French Minister of Sport and the Mayor of Paris.
Botha admits he didn’t discover braaing in “the right way”. The model method is how he got to know coffee.First, I drank Ricoffy, then Koffiehuis, then Nescafé. Then I tasted filter coffee and only later had espresso at university. Then I went to Italy and realised I’d been drinking piss my entire life andI started the exact opposite with the braai. I would go with my father from Oudtshoorn where I grew up, to Herold’s Bay and then walk to Dollieskraal to fish.
This meant he could braai outside with a relatively open fire, but not alarm his neighbours. Every winter from 2011, he moved the braais to another location on the ski slopes. However, he fell back into the intense work schedule he had tried to leave before. To see more of his son, he packed up shop and left for Paris.
He emphasises that he is not a caterer. “They cook food during the week and cool it down to come and warm it up at the wedding and make it look nice on the plate. It can never be very good. The best compliment I ever had was when a well-known wedding DJ came to me and said that he had been doing weddings every weekend for the past 10 years and this was the best food he ever had. That was such a nice compliment,” he says with a shy smile.
All his efforts would go to waste if the French were not as open to him as they are. “What I like about the French is they are totally open to food. They won’t say they won’t eat something. It is so nice to cook for people who love food, enjoy food and know what good food is. I like that they will tell you if you putHowever, some things do take them by surprise like combining meat and sugar.
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