Alumni Stories

Marcus Modimokwane has a formula for anyone wanting to be successful in the culinary industry – passion + skill + research = success. It’s a recipe that Modimokwane has followed closely to get him to where he is today – an entrepreneur and successful chef with his own company, The Flavour Studio, that does catering, product development and brand collaborations. A 2018 graduate, Modimokwane initially worked in brand development and PR where he had the opportunity to work with local and global food brands. “Having culinary qualifications meant I could have more influence in projects and tackle challenges better because colleagues realised I knew what I was talking about. During the Covid lockdown we had no access to a lot of our favourite things, including takeaways, so I thought it would be a good idea to share recipes and show people how to make great dishes. I started shooting content and posting it on my social media pages. A few media houses contacted me and asked if I could collaborate and create content for their media channels, which helped me grow my profile and attracted paying collaborations with some leading brands. I believe that chefs should always push their work on social media pages – especially Instagram and TikTok – because it not only works as their online portfolio but is also attracts clientele.”  What made him choose to study at Capsicum? “I wanted a reputable and internationally recognised school, and Capsicum came top of the list. I had a lot of fun, learned new skills and made some really good friends that have subsequently turned into colleagues and business associates.”

Originally from Kloof in KwaZulu Natal, Isla Rechner qualified as a journalist, before embarking on her tertiary qualifications in hospitality at Capsicum Culinary Studio’s Durban campus from where she gained a patisserie diploma and was awarded graduate of the year in 2010. She honed her skills further when she started running a pastry stall at the Shongweni Farmers Market as well as opening a private catering business. In 2014 with the itch to travel too strong to resist, Isla made the big move to London, working first at one of acclaimed chef Yotam Ottolenghi's eateries, before being hired as a pastry chef at the King's Cross branch of Granger & Co. It was not long before she was promoted to Group Pastry Chef for all four branches of Granger & Co, a role which she says she “utterly relished”.The start of the Covid pandemic and a bad case of homesickness saw Rechner return to South Africa at the end of 2020. She is now engaged, the mother of twins and residing in Sea Point, Cape Town. But her passion for baking and cooking still runs deep and she continues to practice and refine her culinary talent much to the good fortune of the Mother City residents who can now utilise her services and taste her cooking and baking. She continues to do her private cheffing and has a few other enterprises in the works including freezer meals and desserts. She is also kept busy creating content for her Instagram page @islacookscapetown and is planning a recipe book with meals that have been inspired by her travels and local experiences.

Not all students from Capsicum graduate and find themselves working a full-time job in a hotel or kitchen. Some graduates leave and set up their own companies having learned a lot about, and encouraged to embrace, entrepreneurship. One such alumnus is Sera von Gericke who owns and runs Tulbagh 55, a successful events and wedding venue. Sera’s love for cooking only began in her 30s when she had to cater for the foreign guests visiting the family business. “After a while I realised I loved to feed people and would rather be in the kitchen than at the table,” she says. It became Von Gericke's passion and in 2016 she decided to open a small cooking school and at the same time take a night course at the Capsicum Boksburg campus. “My decision to go to Capsicum was so that I could ensure that what I was teaching my students was correct. I enrolled for a Level 2 Diploma in Food Preparation and Culinary Arts and once I graduated my life changed completely.” Sera bought an abandoned property that had stood vacant for many years and turned it into a venue – she called 55 Tulbagh - that has since hosted many successful events from baby showers to birthday parties and weddings. In recent years, she has opened a boutique coffee shop and built another area that can accommodate wedding ceremonies or private dinners, while future plans include a fine dining evening restaurant and a craft beer brewery.

Soweto-born Wandile Mabaso is one of South Africa’s most talked about chefs who is revolutionising the way people think about modern African food. He started cooking from the age of 10, went to hotel school and got his first professional job at Nando’s, then headed overseas for work experience and by the age of 23 had been all over Europe and the Baltics. He returned to South Africa to further his culinary studies at Capsicum and after graduating headed to New York where he found a job at a French restaurant, his first luxury restaurant experience. It was then onto Paris to work at Le Meurice under Ducasse and Jocelyn Herland. However, Africa called and Mabaso returned home to turn a former office space in Bryanston into a bastion of fine dining - Les Créatifs (The Creatives) - which he opened five years ago and where he combines the best French techniques with local ingredients and African influence. Over the years, Wandile has received multiple accolades including Chef of the Year at the Luxe Restaurant Awards, as well as acknowledgement from the Gourmet Guide, Eat Out, The Rasa Awards and The Sunday Times. Before his return to to South Africa and while he was working in Paris, he was given the highest award that exists for a chef in France, the Culinary Excellence of the College de France.

Gugu Wanda has always had a passion for food and cooking but did not consider it as a career and after matriculating she embarked on an LLB degree from the University of KwaZulu Natal. But after four years spent learning about the principles of law, she realised her heart wasn’t in it so she packed it in and enrolled at Capsicum Culinary Studio’s Durban campus for a three-year Food Safety and Culinary Arts Diploma (now the Advanced Professional Chef Programme). She graduated in 2016 and got her first job at Café La Plagè as a griller, quickly moving up to Sous Chef and eventually Head Chef. She then went on to work as a Sous Chef at Bloomsberry Café in Hillcrest and the 5-star Octavia Boutique Hotel in Inanda where she found herself cooking for the Zulu royals. Last year Wanda was invited to take part in The Creole Food Festival, an American food festival that showcases chefs from the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, Asia, South America and the South of the United States. After returning she launched a private catering company called The Next Table, with the aim being to create a space where people, whose paths wouldn’t normally cross, come together and enjoy good food, good wine and good conversation. As if that wouldn’t be enough to exhaust any hardworking chef, she was also recently appointed Head Chef at St Mary’s DSG Kloof and Executive Chef at Little Havana. Both positions she says involve “a lot of work, including staying up to date with culinary trends and kitchen processes, dealing with suppliers and ensuring that they deliver quality goods at affordable prices, managing the inventory and leading a brigade that can put its best foot forward all the time.

Charmaine Lehabe is living proof that, armed with a Diploma in Food Preparation and Cooking from Capsicum Culinary Studio, the world is your oyster and there to be explored and enjoyed. The 29-year old chef, born and raised in Pretoria has, since graduating in 2019, travelled the world, living and working in the US and UK with in-between periods spent back home as a caterer, private chef and food consultant. Lehabe says at the age of 19 she started working as Commis Chef at ASH Restaurant in Cape Town but wanted a qualification to further herself and get more knowledge and experience so enrolled at Capsicum’s Pretoria campus. After graduating in 2019, she was offered a six month placement at a hotel in Massachusetts in the US, followed by five months at a 5-star hotel in Arizona. When Covid hit, she had to return home to wait it out until lockdown restrictions were lifted. “Once we were allowed to get out and about and people were able to mix more freely, I teamed up with a fellow Capsicum alumnus, Thandeka Nhlapo, and started a private fine dining service called The Squared Experience.” That lasted three years during which time she also worked as a food consultant, restaurant chef and private chef to several upmarket clients. In 2022 she returned to the US for a four month stint at a golf resort before returning home and resuming her private chef work. Last year she was offered a position as a Senior Chef de Partie at a boutique hotel in Blairgowrie, Scotland where she is currently working.

Most young graduate chefs attribute their love for cooking to their mothers or grandmothers, for Matt Labuschagne it was his father who inspired him to take up a culinary career. “My dad loves cooking and was always preparing the meals on family camping trips and at home and although it always looked relaxing for him to cook, I can see now how rewarding it was for him to feed us a delicious meal.” Born and raised in Benoni, 23-year-old Labuschagne enrolled at Capsicum’s Boksburg campus in 2019 for a three-year Advanced Professional Chef Programme. After one year he found himself in Aspen, Colorado working at the ski resort’s 5-star, luxury hotel, The Little Nell. “My first industry placement was one of the best things to happen to me. I worked on the grill section in a crazy kitchen the size of a shoebox cooking for 600 to 800 people a day. In the beginning I was so anxious about the lunch service I could feel my heart thumping in my chest on my way to work. But I knew if I didn’t do a good job I would get reassigned to banqueting and have to brunoise shallots for the rest of the day. When Covid struck he returned to SA, but after restrictions were lifted the hotel asked him back, gave him a promotion and wanted him to stay. But he had to return home because he still had two more years at Capsicum and his US visa was about to expire. Labuschagne completed the final two years of his course at Capsicum’s Pretoria campus and, following graduation, he worked at a bakery and then at the acclaimed Embarc in Parkhurst. It was while there that he was contacted via LinkedIn for a post at Riviera by Jean Imbert, one of the dining options at The Lana, Dubai’s first Dorchester Collection hotel where he currently works on the hot line looking after all the pasta dishes.

Even though Tinotenda Sadziwa went to university to study for a BSc in Sociology her real passion lay in cooking, something that had been ignited when she was a young girl. Says the 29-year old chef who hails from Zimbabwe: “From about the age of eight, I started to really love cooking for my family and spending time in our kitchen at home baking with my mother.” So it was no surprise to her family when she told them that she wanted to switch careers from sociology to cheffing. In 2019 she started a small catering business as a side hustle, but the fear of being average and tired of doing the most basic dishes made her decide to enrol at a culinary school so she went on to the internet and searched for the “best culinary schools in South Africa and Capsicum Culinary Studio popped up first.” Tinotenda studied for a Professional Cookery and Patisserie Diploma at the school’s Cape Town campus and after graduating in 2021, started working at the President Hotel as a Pastry Commis Chef. Then the call came with the offer of a position as Pastry Chef at Winslow’s Tavern in Cape Cod, Massachusetts in the US where she is now, responsible for creating and executing dessert menus, ensuring high-quality presentations and tastes, collaborating with the head chef to develop new and innovative dessert recipes and overseeing daily pastry production, maintaining consistency and quality standards. She says that she wants to cook and serve around the world, learn different types of cuisines and save enough money to be able to open my own bakery before 2030.

When Raidin van Rooyen was in Grade 10 he decided that one of the subjects he wanted to do was consumer studies. It turned out to be a serendipitous decision because almost from the outset his interest in the culinary world was ignited and his passion for cooking and baking rocketed. Says the 23-year-old Grahamstown-born Van Rooyen: “In my last year of school, two chef lecturers from Capsicum came and demonstrated how to make and plate up a dish and I was not only hooked on cheffing as a career, but I knew that I wanted to study further at Capsicum.” Van Rooyen signed up to study at the school’s Nelson Mandela Bay campus graduating in July 2022 with a Professional Cookery Diploma. Four months before graduating, van Rooyen applied for, and was appointed, Chef De Partie at Off the Menu Food Emporium, a luxury deli and restaurant that offers boutique wine, food and artisan coffee. His employer, Chef Conrad Gallagher, was the youngest chef ever to be awarded a Michelin star, at the age of 26, for his restaurant Peacock Alley in Dublin in 1998. Two years earlier he had cooked for President Bill Clinton and his guests at the White House.” Inspired by Gallagher’s success and international career, Van Rooyen’s short term goal is to explore, travel, develop new skills and continue to learn from the best. “In five years’ time I want to be designing and launching new menus for upcoming restaurants and hotels,” he says.