, someone who grabs an opportunity when one comes along. It has taken her from the farm to university at Stellenbosch and to New York, a journey that began on 9/11.
Restaurant jobs were not new to her; in her student days she worked at Decameron, a restaurant in Stellenbosch that won an Italian government prize for “most identical Italian restaurant in the southern hemisphere”, according to Andrea Ladu, who runs the restaurant with her partner, Mario. She remembers Hauptfleisch as a vivacious, effervescent person who never forgot a regular customer’s name.
The rooibos tea pork ribs and carpaccio never come off the menu. I sometimes make a bunny chow and I have my own version of a gatsby, the TV show from the 1980s “where everybody knows your name”. “We have people who sit in our restaurant for a glass of wine every single day of their life,” she says. One woman in particular “just comes in, being among the people she loves, and we love her. She’s in her 80s. It’s a wonderful experience with her.