It’s not going to be easy to convince anyone that the new Radisson Red and the huge new development wherein it sits is, cartographically speaking, in Dunkeld. Snort. Surely you see the Rosebank shopping centres right next door? Rosebank, clearly! Even Uber knows that.

On the other, south side of Rosebank is a block stretching from Elephant Corner in Bolton Road and around into Jan Smuts, which houses Sin+Tax, Coalition Pizza, Morning Glory and more. Now that’s really supposed to be Parkwood just there, says some maps. Snort. ’S Rosebank!

In this newly developing food node of, mm-hm, Rosebank, Oxford Parks, is Radisson Red, a day old. Moeng is opposite and another great surprise is about to rock everyone interested in South African food (see next week’s TGIFood). Double Shot, just as famous for teas as it is for legendary coffees, has opened here as well as Cleavy’s Eatery, the vegan food place. Very nearby is Clico fine dining restaurant, within another boutique hotel.

The fine Oxford Parks corner mosaic steps lead up to the Radisson Red corner. Along the left is the hotel’s main entrance but I amble in through the new Oui restaurant and bar, where a gleaming red Vespa is parked. Outside, a photographer is taking pics of Usha Seejarim’s red pair of repurposed iron wings, part of the arty boutique hotel’s new statuary.

Photographic art by Ghanaian photographer, Prince Gyasi. (Photo: Supplied)

Inside, looking down the interleading length, on from Oui, right through a keyhole red couch, is photographic art by Ghanaian photographer, Prince Gyasi. Of bikers in glossy scarlet helmets.

This is not a trad hotel. Not the Red one anyway. It does not have a trad chef. I’m meeting Chef Genghis San here in his own culinary lair. He’s risen brightly, come up along the fairly traditional route through the hotel chains, even falling foul of the one everyone does in Magaliesburg, Mount Grace. But now he’s here and the creativity holds are unbarred. It’s almost unthinkable that one chef and his team see to all the menus and food for three very different food sections of this Radisson Red. 

Chef Genghis San is here and the creativity holds are unbarred. (Photo: Patrick King)

I wear a white hair net for the occasion of being in the heart of the place: the hotel’s kitchen. I especially do not look in the mirror. So that’s a white hair net and a black mask. Fetching. One of the food team, the tallest of the lot, has a pair of white wings on the back of his black chef’s jacket. 

Chef Genghis San, or Chef G as I hear everyone call him, has an office there marked Kitchen with a blind that can look onto the kitchen and the pass if the venetian blind slats are pulled down just a tiny bit.

It’s interesting to see how he changes pace just as we enter the actual kitchen. It’s become that almost-run that chefs have. When I look at his feet he’s wearing croc-shaped footwear for it, in black leather. Pretty practical and trendy. I’ve noticed some of the Radisson Red hotel staff in kicky Converses.

The soon-to-open Red Rooftop Bar & Terrace will serve full-on tapas dishes. (Photo: Supplied)

The main restaurant is the first one I saw, really called OuiBar & Ktchn. It’s fun and flexible for all-day eating. There are starters, salads, a few small plates, poke bowls, mains and grills, burgers, pastas, pizzas and desserts. That’s quite a menu challenge for a chef to work magic, even one with free creative rein.

Chef G says he’s learned that “you can be creative with anything”. It’s where I see the Macaroni Cheesecake on the menu and make a note to come and have some of the giant own-stuffed olives or Chef’s bao bun sliders.

The second restaurant is that pretty cool-looking Red Rooftop Bar & Terrace, where lots of tapas will be served as snacks or as parts of a bigger meal.

The third one is near the entrance proper, kind of next to Oui, called a Grab&Go. Here people help themselves to goodies from the shelves, interesting locally made chocolates, snacks and small meals, health foods made in the kitchen. It also serves as a deli where the hotel’s own-made pickles and preserves as well as frozen meals can be taken home. Baskets are going to be supplied for a bit of culinary shopping.  

Radisson Red serves as a hotel for sleeping and being accommodated but it’s just as much a daytime place for locals. I know the daytime market for the Radisson Reds is generally young and millennial, armed with a laptop, the “urban nomad”. But the situation here is also banking and office-oriented so the menus have had to be those things to those people too. A model I saw being photographed by someone in the lobby looked anything but a millennial nomad. She looked like a stylish businesswoman.

Chef G calls for the makings of that macaroni cheesecake. He smiles at me. I think it’s a surprise.

While he whips up a little meal for us, something that might be on the menu soon, called Nude Thai, he tells me about his roots. I’d have guessed something vaguely Japanese but he’s a “sort of fongkong”, he laughs, with a “Chinese and English” set of grandparents on his paternal side and “South African coloured people” on his mom’s side. There we are, that’s Jozi. Everyone is part of somewhere else, often many parts of. That’s what Jozi food is.

Chef G whips up a little meal for us that might be on the menu soon, called Nude Thai. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

Everyone in his family, siblings included, is a chef. And they have married chefs too. As has Chef G. At his family’s get-togethers “there is likely to be the sort of discussion about whether or not someone should have deglazed”.

His dad is more of the Gordon Ramsay sort, having made him go egg after egg until he continually produced them perfectly cooked. He also taught Genghis about how precious food is and how it must be treated, with respect.

His mother is the source of “a kind of pesto” Chef G mentions more than once. It’s a thing he likes to serve with cumin lamb and is intensely minty and garlicky with chilli. She was his comfort when, after entering and winning competitions galore, even winning his chef school bursary, winning all the way with his various jobs and working his way up during excellent relationships with employers, he decided to terminate one out-of-town contract because he was so miserable. It was the sole low point in his happy career till then. We discuss how something like that throws everything into better perspective afterwards. It’s just hell at the time.

Unbelievably, the younger Genghis thought he wouldn’t be a chef, would be the family breakaway, that he’d be a mechanical engineer. He pursued that thought for two days and then fell into the family chef and food rhythm he knew and hadn’t realised he already loved. He was really one of the San family of chefs. 

Like most adventurous South African chefs, he was familiar with the international range of foods produced here by non-foreigners like the Italian, French, Indian and Jewish cuisines but likes, most of all, to give his food African or Asian slants. Or both.

While Chef G builds up a rather delicious base of adeptly stir-fried vegetables he tells me his favourite food is rice. This dish will have noodles, not rice. But he waxes philosophical about the kinds of rice, the textures, “like all of us, so vastly different” and the way the different kinds behave. I see it is a kind of love I’ve not ever considered. Although he does say that his real comfort, his ultimate go-to is golden egg drop soup made with rice. I get that immediately.

Finishing the ‘cheesecake’ and the Nude Thais at the pass. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

He busies himself with my treat, the “cheesecake”. He builds it up like a fantasy cake, a savoury one. With long, crisped bacon rashers, little tomatoes. I watch in awe and quite some anticipation. Okay, honestly and secretly now, who doesn’t like mac n cheese? Mac n three cheeses with a fourth, parmesan as a major crisp on top?

I am even moved to start eating it, with a spoon, kind of baby-style, when we sit down. It just seems right, even though that spoon is more for using with the fork on the ramen Nude Thai. Which I did too.

Yup, I find how fantastically alluring and fun this mac n cheesiness is. Wonderfully rich too.

Our food, ready to eat. (Photo: Genghis San)

Over our deeply satisfying, wonderfully fresh tasting noodle dish, Chef G says he always makes up a dish by taste in his head and then works in his textures and surprises. He speaks about that addiction thing that chefs have, of cooking to satisfy, cooking to please, cooking and cooking to make people happy. Working crazy hours quite voluntarily just to do that. Living for it.

Much earlier on today he received a compliment from a guest, relayed to him. The man had said, “Please tell the chef thank you – it was so, so good,” I’d noticed Chef G’s eyes misting.

Today he’s doing a double shift because he wants to and makes arrangements with his sous chef for when he does. Chef G will be staying at Radisson Red tonight because it won’t be worth taking the 25 minutes it’ll take him to get home before the curfew and be here early tomorrow. He smiles so beatifically, what would be an inconvenience to others seems like some sort of joy to him. And I can tell he’s done it before.

Although Radisson Red only opened its doors yesterday, Chef G’s already been here with most of the kitchen team for a few weeks.

Here he is, just 31, “turning 32” in this new milieu, loving the new creative license, in an exciting new area with the good, better and best chefs slotting into a fascinating range of Jozi eating. Already the enclave has a sense of thrill. DM/TGIFood

Radisson Red Rosebank, 4 Parks Boulevard, Oxford Parks, Rosebank/Dunkeld. 010 023 3580