Four women changing the way Cape Town eats

Afika Jadezweni

Cape Town’s food scene is rarely short of somewhere new to book, but some of its most interesting culinary voices are shaping the experience well beyond the restaurant table. 

The women carving out their own lanes in the Cape Town food and drink scene work from very different vantage points: the kitchen, the cellar, the communal table and your home. At Upper Union, Executive Chef Amori Burger changes the menu with the seasons and pushes her kitchen to discover new condiments; at Hazendal, Cellarmaster Kiara Scott Farmer brings a scientific curiosity to winemaking, with Chenin Blanc among her current favourites; at Reverie Social Table, founder and chef Julia Hattingh recreates the warmth of a dinner party around one communal table; and on the Dineplan blog, chef, food educator and TAMU author Jane Nshuti shares recipes and stories that bring the food of her heritage into contemporary home kitchens.

We’ve turned their stories into a Cape Town dining trail, with the details you wonder about when you’re making dining plans: what to order, what to look out for, where to book and, in Jane’s case, what to cook at home.

Amori Burger, Executive Chef at Upper Union

If you’ve been to Upper Union before, don’t expect to return to exactly the same menu the next time you visit. That’s not a bad thing, by the way. The restaurant changes its offering with the seasons, while Executive Chef Amori Burger keeps pushing the kitchen to experiment with ingredients and flavour combinations.

Her particular obsession is with what sits alongside the main dish. “Every single menu we produce has to have a minimum of six condiments we’ve never heard of,” says Chef Amori. “We challenge ourselves – a lot of learning and training goes on in this kitchen.”

That philosophy gives the menu its edge, with dishes moving between the Middle East, India, North Africa and South Africa, while pickles, ferments, harissa and zhug bring acidity, heat and spice into the mix.

Burger’s interest in food started early. At 13, she would empty the fridge with her sisters and use every cheese and condiment they could find to make bite-sized pieces of toast. That curiosity eventually took her from the team that started Van der Linden in Johannesburg to executive chef positions at Lion Sands and Sabi Sands lodges.

The move into leadership was not without its challenges, particularly in an industry where she worked predominantly with male teams.

“I joined the lodges in my 30s, and my team was 90% men in their late 40s. It was a struggle and took a year to win them over. Now they’re some of my favourite humans on the planet, but as a woman, you have to work twice as hard in this industry. As we grow, it’s also our duty as women to support the growth of female chefs. We have a responsibility.”

When people walk away from a meal at Upper Union, Amori wants them to remember a moment, whether it’s the way they’re greeted at the door, the mains arriving, an engagement taking place or something the sommelier said. It’s this heartfelt approach to dining, coupled with an unparalleled level of technical precision that’s helped establish Upper Union as one of Cape Town’s unmissable culinary destinations, a spot that avid fans return to again and again.

Kiara Scott Farmer, Cellarmaster at Hazendal Wine Estate

What happens when a winemaker comes to wine through science rather than tradition? In Kiara Scott Farmer’s case, it led to a career that has already broken several barriers.

“I didn’t grow up in a wine-drinking family or community,” says the Hazendal Wine Estate Cellarmaster. “I was raised on the Cape Flats and never exposed to fine wine, but I developed this curiosity around the science of it; the chemical reaction that takes place; how it makes people feel.”

At 26, Scott Farmer became Head Winemaker at a wine estate in Paarl, with Duncan Savage as her mentor, making her the youngest female Head Winemaker in the country at the time. In 2024, she became the first woman of colour to receive the Diners Club Winemaker of the Year Award.

At Hazendal, she experiments with fermentation, harvesting times, barrel sizes and blends, while her current favourite is the Hazendal Estate Collection Chenin Blanc.

“South Africa is currently making some of the best wines in the world,” adds Kiara. “We’ve got some fantastic producers. We’re understanding our terroir better and levelling up.”

That makes the Hazendal Wine Lounge the obvious stop for a taste of her work, particularly while the estate is running its Winter Special. Start with the Chenin, then explore the wider range and let the wine do the talking.

Jane Nshuti, Chef, Food Educator + Author 

Jane Nshuti’s contribution to the dining trail is one you can take home. Her work as a chef, food educator and author of TAMU centres on recipes, ingredients and stories that connect food with memory, family and place, with sorghum and cassava among the indigenous African ingredients she champions.

Her relationship with cooking began at nine, when she stayed behind to prepare food while her older siblings went to work. Later, as her family moved through Kenya and Uganda, the kitchen became one of the few constants in an unfamiliar environment. Today, that same sense of nourishment and belonging sits at the heart of her cooking.

“I’m a mother, and the first thing I think about when I cook for my family is not about how fancy it is but how nourishing it is. I focus on how it makes people feel. It’s instinct. Women’s kitchens are often calm and peaceful and nourishing to the people we work with or cook for. It’s something you feel in the food. My book is really about how a kitchen can bring a sense of home to wherever you are.”

That perspective was not immediately embraced by the publishing world, as TAMU was rejected by countless publishers who told Nshuti that African food and personal storytelling would not sell. Still, she kept pursuing the book until one of those no’s became a yes.

“So many no’s eventually turned into a yes,” she says. “When you have a vision, keep chasing it because you understand it better than everyone else.”

The easiest way to encounter Nshuti’s work is therefore not by making another restaurant reservation, but by trying your hand at one of her recipes. Discover Jane and Livhuwani’s recipes, food stories and culinary inspiration on the Dineplan blog, where you can take her approach to food from the screen into your kitchen.

Julia Hattingh, Founder + Chef at Reverie Social Table

Julia Hattingh built Reverie Social Table around a simple idea: the best dinner parties are not only about what is on the plate. Before opening the restaurant in 2018, she had worked her way through fine-dining kitchens, including Le Quartier Français under Margot Janse, but it was the dinners she hosted at home that stayed with her.

“Those were always the happiest times in our house. The food mattered, but so did the ambience, the conversation and how you felt.”

At Reverie, that feeling is built into the format. Guests sit around one communal table and eat a seasonal tasting menu made with produce sourced from local farmers and suppliers, so the person sitting opposite you is part of the evening whether you arrived knowing them or not.

Hattingh considers the conversations that continue after dinner one of the best measures of whether the evening worked.

“When strangers chat into the night or keep in touch after dinner, that’s the sign of a successful evening.”

It is also why Hattingh is interested in creating a restaurant that feels specific to its place, rather than one that could be transplanted into any city. She sees a growing appetite among diners for independent restaurants with a stronger sense of identity, and she wants more women to have the confidence and backing to build those spaces themselves.

“There are so many more women in the industry now, but they’re still often working under a male chef, even if a woman is running the show.”

Her advice to women coming through the industry is to take the risk, cook what makes them happy and find the people who will champion them.

“There is such an amazing support network. There are women in this industry who want to see each other grow.”

If that sounds like your kind of dinner, Reverie is the place to book when you want the food to start a conversation.

This article was not sponsored and contains no affiliate links. All opinions expressed are those of the editorial team.