The scramble for Africa in fine dining: Even if Black cuisine were equally represented, the White diner’s gaze will continue to define it
, Nhamo, a peasant boy in colonial Zimbabwe gloats to his younger sister about the prospect of being whisked away to his educated uncle’s home, where he will no longer eat with his bare hands, but now advance to eating with a knife and fork.
First, it would expose that, by design, the idea of Black fine-dining is a paradox. The living legacy of spatial apartheid has ensured that Black-owned, African fine-dining establishments do not exist in a plural form within the mainstream hospitality industry. Ask anyone in Johannesburg, it is exceptionally difficult to find an African restaurant or an African menu in a fine-dining context.
In Johannesburg, a yoga studio or a ramen restaurant is just not about to pop up in Hillbrow. Even Uber drivers don’t want to go there. With the exception of a gentrified microspace like the Maboneng precinct, which has merely repackaged apartheid’s spatial inequalities, the inner city remains defiantly Black and impenetrable.
The same umleqwa will be placed under a salamander and grilled down to a black and brown sticky crisp. The starchy side, pap, will be rolled into balls with a cheese filling, dipped in egg, crumbed and then deep-fried into a golden crisp. This hybrid indigenous dish will be presented as a new, expensive product and served for the rich White elite at tables where Black people typically don’t have a seat.
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