Tuesday night finds me somewhere in Joburg, mid-sabbatical. This can’t be right, I tell the Uber driver. It’s a bland mini-mall in Bryanston. Maybe it’s that one, he says, pointing to Lolita’s. “I think not,” I reply. “It’s called Les Creatifs. Hang on,” I say, “I’ll ask these two guys here.”

Two men are standing chatting on the corner. “I’m looking for Les Creatifs and I think I’m in the wrong place,” I tell them. One of them reaches to shake my hand. “I’m the chef,” he says. “We’re expecting you.”

Thus began an extraordinary night of food, theatre and personal attention of a kind I’ve never experienced in a restaurant, thanks in part to this being an uncustomarily quiet weeknight with only one other table of two in the house. Highly unusual, as I knew from not nabbing a table twice in succession on earlier visits to the city. One of the pair, I hear, was the head honcho of a leading bank. Typical of the kind of people who dine in chef Wandile Mabaso’s refined den devoted to the fine art of the plate and the palate.

Les Creatifs (The Creatives), it turns out, is upstairs at the end of the passage. As nondescript as you could imagine, until you open the door and step inside. It’s a rather small space but beautiful in its elegance, with Caesarstone tables that look like wood, bespoke stainless steel chairs you’d swear were wooden, a bar counter fronted in concrete that looks nothing like concrete. A magnificent Persian carpet warms your feet, unusual in a restaurant. There’s striking art on the walls that is curated by head pastry chef Kenosi Malebye. There’s been R5-million worth of art sales to date, Mabasa tells me later. The current artist of the month when I visit is Sthu Manaka, an abstract portrait painter from Soweto. You’re drawn to the eyes, which are always obscured.

Chef Wandile Mabasa and crew. From the left: Tebogo Matjila, Kenosi Malebye, Doe’Re Cairncross, Refiloe Mofokeng, Mthokozisi Dube, chef Wandile Mabaso, Khabi Masilela, Thabiso Sikhakhane, Bismarck Mangcaka, Limited Sabi. (Photo: Supplied)

My eyes are all over the menu, but Wandile quickly tells me he will be sending out his own choice of dishes for me tonight. I  don’t know what my colleague Marie-Lais Emond has told him about me but he is keen to show off everything about the place, down to a quick tour of his pristine kitchen shortly before I leave. I’m honoured, flattered and spoilt.

But first, a scene-setting chef’s favour. An egg shell containing a hardbody chicken broth that has been cooked for 48 hours. The egg used for serving it came from the same chicken. It’s set in a nest of the corn they feed on, an elegantly simple foretaste of whatever’s to come. Provenance, perfected. President Cyril Ramaphosa was in for lunch the other day and couldn’t stop talking about the dish.

Perfect is the word that comes to mind all evening. The man is the epitome of a perfectionist. Mild-mannered, soft-spoken, elegant. His food reflects who he is. He is a rare chef indeed.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Chef Wandile Mabaso, a Jozi food hero shining in the shadows

Indian Ocean, the name of the next dish, laps up on my shore. You won’t find better prawns than these Mozambican tigers that come to him from a fisherman in Maputo once a week, he insists. There’s also Maputo squid, confit ginger and confit potato, and Cape Malay prawn jus. I’d gone up to the pass, set theatrically between kitchen and diner, below his name emblazoned above, and photographed him plating it up, meticulously. His perfectionist nature is evident in every morsel.

Mabasa plates up the Indian Ocean. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

A palate cleanser of passionfruit and coconut sorbet clears the way for a very different course of Krugersdorp beef tongue. It’s in a marrow bone broth and has been braised for eight hours at 80℃, then cooled in the same liquid for about 90 minutes. This holds the meat together and prevents disintegration. You don’t go to all that trouble to have the thing fall apart. The beef jus is smoked with imphepho, African sage (dried leaves of a species of liquorice plant). There’s chakalaka potato, melon atchar, pickled mung beans, caramelised onion, and spiced cherries braised in Cognac. Everything melds on plate and palate; the tongue is soft and dreamy.

Interestingly, these two courses are juxtaposed on the menu. You choose between them, one or the other. But when sending both out, Mabasa deemed the Indian Ocean dish a wiser first course. His time spent with Alain Ducasse in France and in French restaurants in New York City is evident in every aspect, with the original touch of local ingredients adding intrigue and context. He’s taken everything he learnt abroad, brought it back, sourced locally and with ingenuity, and formed a cuisine all his own that reflects the French culinary heritage in a South African way.

The choices for the second course are Centurion Duck (which I would have chosen, had I been dining like a normal customer) and Natal cod fish, but again, I get both. I’m starting to wonder if I’m getting the entire menu, but he slows down later on. The Centurion Duck is wild duck leg confit flavoured with garam masala and confited for six to seven hours in its own fat, then cooled in the same fat. There’s carrot purée with my favourite star anise, red cabbage chutney, a layer of bulgar wheat, confit kumquat, brussels sprouts “charred the American way” and topped with a gastrique of reduced naartjie with toasted spices, finished with white wine vinegar for the required sweet-sour balance. “We use the entire duck,” Wandile tells me. The sauce is made from the carcass, neck, wings and feet.

Natal black cod. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

Inspired by chef Nobu Matsuhisa’s renowned Black Cod Den Miso, for his next course Mabasa has run with the idea in a dish called Natal Cod Fish. Charred black cod from our own shores has been marinated in garlic oil. Butternut purée is delicately infused with rosemary. Beluga black lentils are cooked with cumin. There’s pickled red pepper and atchar mousse. The gastrique is made from reduced butternut juice finished with apple cider vinegar.

Centurion duck. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

The menu keeps coming back to spices and ingredients associated with disparate South African cuisines. Centurion goat is braised for eight hours in Cape Malay spices. Karoo lamb saddle is served with an indlubu (bambara) bean ragout. There’s something of Africa about this French cuisine. Perhaps the most French of them all is the pepper-crusted Midlands Wagyu with its Bordelaise-style reduction sauce.

Midlands wagyu. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

“You’re the first person to send back Wagyu,” he mumbles wryly when I leave some on the plate. I feel a tad guilty but he says it is good spirit.

Centurion goat. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

I have to find room for dessert, having got this far. He chooses for me the Coffee Bean Sculpture, the pastry chef’s triumph of chocolate encasing a cappuccino mousse and chocolate sponge, finished with a strawberry coulis and a pecan and lime parfait to cut the sweetness. 

There have, all along the way, been fine wines, some from France (40% of the wines are French), others from the Cape. I cannot do justice to every drop but I taste each as they’re elegantly served. Mercurey Premier Cru. Paul Jaboulet Viognier Secret de Famille. Terre Paisible Les Dames de ‘87 sauvignon blanc from Franschhoek. My favourites are a pinot noir from northern Burgundy and a fabulous Vigne d’Or five-varietal red blend, also from Terre Paisible.

“I don’t think,” he said quietly at one point, “that I’ve reached even 50% of my capabilities.” Then he shared secret new plans with me, but for that, like all of the best things in life, we will have to wait. DM

Mabasa declined to proffer a bill, though Daily Maverick was fully expecting to pay.