Born among vineyards, wine — and consequently food — were always going to be at the centre of the life of Michael Olivier. Few knew and understood the essence of traditional South African food better than the Godfather of Malva Pudding.

For this writer, this is personal. Michael was a friend and respected colleague (in that he took to writing about food and wine in his later decades) who took the trouble to care about people and let them know it. 

During the five years that I have been food editor of Daily Maverick, he has been amazingly staunch to me. On almost every weekday afternoon, a WhatsApp would ping on my phone from Michael after he had read my daily recipe. The very last one came on Wednesday, 13 December, shortly before we paused for the end-of-year break. “Love the Durban Mutton Curry. Your devoted fan. Michael. 💝💝💝”

Then, silence. Everyone gets on with their family lives at that time of year, but on 30 December a message appeared from Angela Lloyd, wine fundi extraordinaire. She had heard via their WhatsWine App group that he had died the previous evening. I wrote immediately to Maddy (Madeleine) Olivier, who was far more than a wife and partner to Michael. She was ever at his side, in their working lives and at home, so much so that it is impossible to picture him without her alongside.

We can take some relief in the knowledge that he did not have to suffer at the (unexpected) end. On New Year’s Day (imagine having to deal with something like this at new year), Maddy wrote to me: 

“I wanted you to know that Michael loved being back in the Cape and was doing well. We moved back at the end of March 2023. He spent Friday morning with a friend plotting and planning an income stream for 2024. After supper he spent a few hours working on a novel he wanted to write, starting today!

“At about 23h30 he sorted out his bedside table, plugged in his phone to charge and lay down. Within minutes his breathing became rapid so he sat up and said to me he wasn’t feeling well. By the time I came around the bed to him, he had died, instantly and painlessly. His heart just stopped. I phoned my brother at 11h53, he was with me within 10 minutes.”

Michael Olivier and his beloved Maddy. (Photo: Supplied)

Family followed swiftly, and arrangements were made for a celebration of his life, so far away that there was no possibility of me being able to attend. But I can pay tribute in my own way, to an old friend and colleague whom I admire greatly, and I cannot find it in me to use the past tense. I still look at my WhatsApps daily in the mad hope that a new one might appear.

There’s a BackaBuddy champion page for Michael Olivier. Find it here.

Warm heart of hospitality

Micheael Olivier in his natural element, centre. Nosing wine, left. And with his last book, which was all about what truly mattered to him: friends, food, flavour and, of course, wine. (Photos: Supplied)

Throughout my decades of living in Cape Town, Michael Olivier had always been there, somewhere. At Lanzerac when David Rawdon was in situ, black Rolls Royce and all. At Boschendal when their buffet became famous, and where the story of the malva pudding started, which Michael championed. No restaurant ever did more to celebrate traditional South African food than Boschendal, and Michael was at the heart of it right from the start. His days as a restaurateur continued at Paddagang in Tulbagh and at Burgundy in Hermanus, and finally at Parks on the border of Wynberg and Constantia.

One sunny Wednesday in the early Nineties I pitched up at this as-yet-unopened restaurant to be met by a smiling Michael and Maddy. I’d only encountered them before as a customer at Boschendal where a suited Michael was ever present, smiling, greeting and keeping the restaurant machine oiled. But this was a new season in his life as a restaurateur, a posh dining palace in a characterful house in easy reach of the Constantia dining-out set.

He and Maddy showed me around, I asked lots of questions, they gave me rich and quotable answers, I photographed everything in sight, and when I got back to the office I wrote it up. That Friday, my story was on the front page of Top of the Times in The Cape Times and the phone at Parks started ringing. All weekend. Within two days the place was booked out for three weeks, and it never stopped from then onwards, for 10 years. This is not to take credit: Parks succeeded because Michael, and Maddy must be mentioned in the same breath, was an utter pro who just got it right, every day, month, week and year of that fabulous tenure.

Over the years since they decided to close Parks, I encountered Michael here and there, sometimes at dinners or lunches, and even when they moved to Johannesburg for some years he remained in touch. In the latter years of his career, he was a roving man of wine and food, writing, sharing, promoting, revelling in the joys of it all. He was a man true to what he had been born to, on a farm in the Durbanville area. And it made sense that ultimately, he came home to nearby Somerset West, his final months soothed by the False Bay breeze that caresses the sauvignon blanc vines on the lower reaches of the mountains that guard the vineyards.

Fond tributes

But let others have their say too. I took my lead from Maddy, as it is too easy to run to the obvious famous people in a given person’s world when they depart. “I think of you and Errieda du Toit first,” she replied, which surprised me as I would have expected to be many notches down the list. Michael Fridjhon’s name was swiftly mentioned, and as we dove down the rabbit hole a small coterie of devoted Olivierites assembled.

But let’s start with Errieda du Toit.

“I knew of Michael Olivier way before he knew me. In my early years as a budding foodie from Joburg, we used to plan our Cape holiday around a visit to Paddagang in Tulbagh,” Errieda, who like Michael has long been a major force on the South African food scene, told TGIFood when asked to tell us about her long friendship with him. “This was the foundation for my passion for Cape food traditions, waterblommetjiebredie and rosyntjietert.

“I adored Michael. How could I not?  One of the kindest and most unselfish people in the food world. Michael the Encourager. Michael the Wise. Michael my go-to when I needed an impeccable source about the origins of a dish, or his childhood memories of growing up in Durbanville (I’m a child of the Northern Suburbs and was thrilled that we could lay claim to this legend.)

“I remember a table side chat with him at the time that nose-to-tail eating started to be ‘a thing’ and as I was fairly new in food writing circles, Michael inspired me to delve into the emotional side of food as the source of inspiration, rather than follow trends. 

“Through his story-telling, I could imagine the young Michael on the back of his grandfather’s truck — perhaps a plaasbakkie? He would tell the story with glee how his grandfather regularly fetched pig heads from his butcher — four pig’s heads would be staring at young Michael all the way home.

“As our food friendship grew so did my stash of Michael emails and DM’s — all so informative and entertaining that I never deleted a single one: ‘Hello dear Errieda, I learnt something new today. My grandmother used to say, ‘every day something new in God’s world.’ The French soupe is derived from the Latin word suppa which is bread soaked in broth. How’s that for ‘Sop en Brood.’ Love, love, love, Mxx.’

“He was my guide back to the 60s and 70s when I did research on the evolution of Stellenbosch’s food culture: he took me to a world where Enrico the Italian had a restaurant behind the museum, when Lanzerac introduced cheese lunches for 95 cents and Mrs Rupert shared her recipe for the famous seed loaf with the cook.

“Both passionate followers of C Louis Leipoldt, he shared with me his joy in recreating Leipoldt’s curry chicken to reflect how it would have tasted 70-80 years ago. (Leipoldt’s recipes didn’t contain enough instructions for the amateur — Michael could decipher it for us.) We also shared a love for curried eggs — I preferred his family recipe made with coconut milk which surpasses even my mom’s. I now find comfort in this seemingly simple dish, now delicately interwoven with my love and memories of this culinary gentleman. 

“Vaarwel ons Man met die Pan.”

Wine fundi Michael Fridjhon walked long roads with Michel Olivier:

“I first met Michael in the early 1980s when he began work at Boschendal, handling communications and event management,” he told us. 

“He was utterly unflappable, with a perfect sense of how to make an Anglo event informal and relaxed (seemingly a contradiction in terms). I remember attending a bash in a marquee at the farm attended by several of the main board directors. Michael issued everyone — guests and hosts alike — with zany straw hats which he insisted they wore from the moment they entered the tent. Extraordinarily, they all did. 

“Everyone seemed willing to fool around, drinking with greater enthusiasm than they had originally intended, going from table to table, telling jokes, playing pranks and behaving quite badly. Michael watched this with a look of amused satisfaction — as if this had always been his plan — so I went up to him and asked him why he was looking so smug. He told me that the trick was the hats: he said that when someone puts on a hat it’s like wearing a mask — he loses his inhibitions because subconsciously he thinks he’s wearing a disguise. There’s no doubt that this was his strategy and it certainly worked.

“After he left Boschendal he ran a fabulous restaurant in Tulbagh called Paddagang: in the 1980s most of SA was a culinary desert but Paddagang was a real oasis in the most unlikely place. After that, I next remember him at Parks, an equally fabulous establishment delivering thoughtful and innovative cuisine in a suburban house (which was unusual in those days) where his partner (and the owner of the premises, the late Dale Parker) gave him the financial freedom to create something truly exceptional.

“He embraced the internet and the opportunity of developing an online presence long before most foodies: his website was always packed with news — an easy and accessible read, as were his books.

“He was never pushy, always gentle and charming, a repository of food and culinary knowledge (most of it acquired from first-hand experience). He had a wonderful and very gentle sense of humour, never hurtful, always able to lighten a day and bring a smile to those he engaged with. His last few years were quite difficult, his terrible leg injury took ages to heal and I’m sure the pain and the recovery took years off his life: I don’t remember him ever complaining, not about that, or about how hard it must have been for him to keep up his website or to keep working on his publications. It’s impossible to overestimate the courage that must have taken.”

Straight-talking and ebullient, the larger-than-life presence that is restaurateur Fortunate Mazzone (Forti) knew and admired Michael Olivier, and his response to our request for a tribute was swift and rich.

“Michael Olivier was a gentleman of the old school. He was the most impeccably mannered man I ever met, and certainly one of the kindest.

“His knowledge of food and wine was encyclopaedic, and as a young chef I had the privilege of working with him at several of the international food shows held in SA. He had a quiet confidence and a genteel manner, and he warmed to me as a passionate young chef and wrote many beautiful things about me in various articles he wrote for various publications. 

“He had a way of ‘getting’ what you were about. He never had a bad word to say about anyone. If he found something wrong he quietly approached the person or organisation, and had a knowledgeable word with the responsible party, without besmirching them in the platform of the Fourth Estate. He just said nothing. 

“But if you did something good or that excited him, he happily spread the good and inspiring news with the world. He was that kind of inspiring figure. And one of the very few people I knew who spoke with the true authority that comes with a lifetime of practice in our sacred field of hospitality. 

“I will miss him, his warm hugs, his kindly messages and our all to infrequent lunches, so much. His beloved Maddy and his family will be left with a gaping hole in their lives.”

Angela Lloyd had been the person to first bring me the news of Michael’s passing.

“I must’ve met Michael in the early 1980s, when he was at Boschendal,” she shared. “The buffet lunch was very grand for those days, the restaurant the epitome of class for the Winelands. Michael would always be there to welcome guests with his usual broad smile; he made one feel welcome and wanted; he was the perfect host and gentleman, a member of the old school with always something good to say about his many friends.

“I admired the way he and Maddy adapted their style of cooking for the local ambience — simpler and country fare but always of excellent quality. His focus was on local wines. Food and wine were his passion and pleasure and an enthusiasm he easily conveyed to inspire others.

“The Burgundy in Hermanus and Parks in Wynberg/Constantia were his other two restaurants. He joined our big WhatsWine app group sometime last year and became an active member, posting videos of wines he reviewed but also commenting on other people’s posts. 

“I remember someone had written about a Bordeaux red from 2003 he was going to drink; I commented along the lines of, ‘I hope it’s alright, 2003 was a very hot year.’ Michael immediately responded to me: ‘My dear Angela, what you don’t know about wine wouldn’t fit on a postage stamp.’ Or words to that effect. So Michael, full of compliments for everyone.”

But let a key member of a younger generation have the last word, and this is apposite. Michael did not only stay in touch with the deep history of food, especially traditional and Cape food, and the personalities of those earlier decades. He concerned himself with what was going on now too, and knew who was doing what in the current culinary world in South Africa.

Sam Linsell has become a highly respected personality in the food world in recent years. Her recipes are utterly professional and trusted, she takes fabulous food photographs and her food styling is immaculate. She is also one of the nicest people in the business, just as Michael always was. No surprise, then, that Michael thought very highly of her.

Here’s what Sam had to say:

“Michael was the Godfather of the best Malva pudding this country has ever known. It was from Maggie Pepler who worked with Michael at Boschendal for a short period. It ended up on their buffet for over four decades. Many people, including myself, have written about this legendary recipe, and Michael loved sharing it.

“Michael always loved sharing his encyclopaedic knowledge about food and wine with anyone who was interested. I learned so much from him over the years. He mentored me in my early days in food media. Always cheering me on or pointing out something that could have been done better or changed. 

“I will always remember his kind words when I lamented about my terrible dating experiences or that I would never be thin because I loved food so much. He guided and mentored so many people. We met on Twitter before meeting in real life and he would send out a tweet every Friday to a group of us foodie women to say ‘happy Friday’. It was a sweet, heartwarming thought that summed up this mensch of a man.

“Michael used social media in the best way possible. To connect positively with a lot of people. After leaving Cape Town it was the only way he could. For the past few years he frequently sent me memes and reels of interesting food and life snippets as well as updates about his children and grandchildren.

“I wish I could have told Michael how wonderful he was and I wish I could have said goodbye. I will remember him forever.”

As will I. RIP you dear, lovely man. My WhatsApp life will never be the same. DM

Visit Michael Olivier’s website.