In the shadows of Cape cuisine

Talented chef Abbas Abrahams steps out of retirement and into the limelight at a centre in Century City

- TGIFOOD Tony Jackman

Unlike so many celebrated chefs, Chef Abbas Abrahams has spent his career in the shadows of others in Cape Town. But he's always been there.

And with an invitation to visit the Century City Conference Centre to interview its executive chef, everything fell into place. The centre's group marketing manager, Sue Levy, explained that the centre has just won the Eventex Large Venue Award. "Chef Abbas is the reason why it's all so successful," she says. "People come back for the centre, but they also come back for the food."

Abrahams is so fundamental to the centre's success that he has been persuaded out of retirement - twice. Chatting to him for an hour at the centre, I found myself tracking his career. All of it in Cape Town.

We also chatted about how few South African dishes have been on Cape Town menus over the decades. You'd never have found a koesister on a local menu (as I did recently at Veld restaurant at Spier Hotel). Or hardbody chicken, straight out of the farmyard into the kitchen at The LivingRoom in Durban.

With German, Austrian and Swiss chefs in charge of all the big kitchens, and their distaste for Cape dishes and ingredients, an entire cuisine was casually suppressed. There was no evil intent, no design - it was too flippant for that.

Ironically, today Abrahams is in charge of a kitchen so big that he doubts there's a bigger one anywhere in the city. It's ginormous. He took me through, past station after sizeable station, and the output of this space is bewilderingly huge.

"I just don't think those continental chefs have an interest in what we make here," he said. "And I think that's a part of the problem. I think they came with their experience and they wanted to showcase what they knew. So we just had to follow suit."

And chefs in the Cape found themselves making continental starters, main courses and desserts, ignoring everything they grew up with in their kitchens at home.