A table set for Africa

From Kinshasa to Kilimanjaro, Épicure offers an elegant, soulful celebration of African flavours and food heritage

- Kibo Ngowi

On a sunny yet cold Friday afternoon, I found myself in a gorgeous space on the seventh floor of the One Rosebank apartment building with panoramic views.

I was visiting Épicure, a pan-African fine dining restaurant, which I soon discovered is not just a new addition to Joburg’s culinary scene but the revival of a dream its proprietor has held sacred for years.

Born in Burundi and brought up in Belgium, Fathi “Chef Coco” Reinarhz arrived in South Africa in 2001 for what was supposed to be a six-month job.

“Three months in,” he says, “I went back to Belgium and told my wife: ‘We're moving. We found the best part of Africa.”

Épicure opened in 2018 in Morningside but closed two years later due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It was hard,” he admits. “My partner pulled out. We lost the premises.

“But I always knew the vision wasn’t dead. A setback isn’t a failure. It’s a realignment.”

His dream wasn’t just to open a restaurant but to redefine African fine dining.

“Too often, when people think of African restaurants, they imagine cheap, unsafe places in dodgy neighbourhoods. But I wanted to build something refined.

“I wanted people to feel proud of African food. Proud to eat it. Proud to serve it. Proud to share it.”

That’s why the menu is divided by region and why the set menu is called News of Africa.

“We hear so much bad news about Africa,” he says. “This is a way to share good news — through taste, through beauty, through story.”

I was part of a group of people invited to savour the News of Africa menu, taking Chef Coco’s lead on a journey through the diverse flavours of the continent — and it was a journey to remember.

The first sip of the Kinshasa Kir, a champagne-based cocktail laced with ginger and a touch of pili-pili from Central Africa, leaves a sharp bitterness on my tongue.