Margot Janse, executive chef, Le Quartier Français Hotel, South Africa

She dreamed of being an actress until she fell in love with cooking. Now Margot Janse, originally from The Netherlands, is executive chef at the award winning, Le Quartier Français Hotel in Franschhoek, South Africa – where she has been for the past 20 years. The Staff Canteen caught up with Margot when she took part in Northcote’s Obsession series. She spoke to us about South African ingredients, what she thinks of British cuisine and being a woman in a male dominated industry.

You didn’t start off initially wanting to be a chef did you?

I had always wanted to act, I wanted to go to acting school, that was my aim, I was really determined! I did drama school and they all thought I was a bit young, they told me to go see the world which I didn’t really want to do. I had a South African boyfriend at the time who was offered a job in Zimbabwe and I thought lets go, why not, I was 20, the world is your oyster – so we went. I was always cooking, I was determined to pursue it and I found a restaurant who took on apprentices in Johannesburg.

So how old were you then when you joined the team?

I was 23, the restaurant was simple fine dining which was actually a great way to start because the head chef was a good, positive mentor and let me play and let me try things out. I would create dishes and he would say yay that is going on the specials; so I learnt a lot in his kitchen about creativity.

I learnt a lot from the other apprentices too they knew more than me so they were teaching me all the techniques and how to approach things. They loved teaching me and I loved learning, I wanted to learn everything. I learnt a lot there and then moved to Cape Town and came into a far more fine dining environment.

Where were you working when you moved to Cape Town?

I joined the Bay Hotel, it is on the beach and is very beautiful, at that time it was a British chef, he was doing modern British food and I had just gotten White Heat (Marco Pierre White) and thought ahh I need to create food like that.

In total I stayed for just under two years and I was promoted to junior sous chef, so that was very quick, but there was still lots of room to create which I really liked.

Where did you go from there then, what made you leave?

One of the guys I worked with in Johannesburg had become the sous chef at Le Quartier Francais, he wasn’t enjoying it and he asked would I be interested in taking over his position as sous chef. I had a chat with the head chef John, who also the owned the restaurant with his wife Susan. Six months later they got divorced and John left. Susan asked me to take his place and she said she really believed I could do it. I had only been cooking for about four years at that point so it was really something.

So how old were you then?

I was 25, and the pressure was huge, everybody was saying ‘who is that’? A lot of people thought I was ridiculous and therefore I put a lot of pressure on myself, and eventually I launched my menu and from there it became an evolution, my evolution, of how I grew and how I became what I believe in.

So in 20 years, how have you and the restaurant grown, has your food style changed a lot in those years?

Of course, thank god! I have constantly evolved and I think that is why I am still here. I wish we had documented every single change from the way it was when I started. I have always had strong beliefs about quality and about speaking a very specific language in your food. We changed the restaurant, we changed the concept and we added a bar.

When people come to The Tasting Room it is not just about coming for a great dinner, it is about coming for the experience, and it is a surprise menu that we do, so from the moment you walk in you have nothing to do.

Our style of service is very different from what you would find in Europe, it is more a storytelling service. My service staff are extremely proud of what they do and are very good at entertaining you with stories about the plate of food in front of you, such as how I managed to get that milk and cream by convincing the farmer I would adopt his cow - it is a whole experience at the table and you learn about things in South Africa.

What sort of ingredients are there in South Africa which maybe people in the UK have not come across before?

There is a lot! At the minute num-num are ripe again, a num-num is a type of shrub, a plummy type fruit that you pick, it is acidic and a little bit spicy and is red. We pick quite a lot of herbs that we can’t order from our vegetable supplier, we use herbs called Katokbos which is a wild, indigenous rosemary. We use buchu, which is becoming quite popular around the world, but it is only grown in the Cape region, it doesn’t grow anywhere else in the world. It is used a lot in tropical fruit juices, or in wine gums, the blackcurrant flavours, I recognise it now when I eat a wine gum, perfume like Hugo Boss also uses it, it is very fragrant and also very good for you.

What about meats and fish?

We have a lot of different type of antelope, buck, ostrich and wildebeest. We use a game farm where we have an agreement, they tell me what they are shooting that day, I say if I’m interested and they’ll go and shoot them and hang them for five days. I’ll get say six saddles and we hang it in our special cool room for another two weeks and then we de-bone it and weigh the loins and the fillets and say we have 8kilo of loin, one kilo of fillet, and you send them the money based on that - it is largely based on trust.

We also have fantastic oysters, some crab but not a lot, with fish it really depends on what is going at that moment. We can’t complain, our produce is so beautiful but you also have to respect the fact that certain things are not there in certain seasons, I don’t use Spanish this and French that and German that, I use African, that can be challenging sometimes, but also I don’t want to use what everyone else is using.

As a woman in the industry, how has your experience been - has it been a bit of a battle?

Yes. I think it is definitely a man’s world out there, but I don’t think that means women are not able. I have had to fight to get the respect, especially with more technical things in my kitchen like dealing with my stoves and dealing with all of that stuff - you almost have to fight that little bit harder to show them you do know what you are talking about.

I took over from someone who had been doing it for a long time and had a lot of respect from people in the industry. I think any profession is tough and I think in any profession when a woman turns into a mother it becomes tougher! When you are working with food, you don’t think about anything else, it is like wow, it is so exciting that the hours and all of that becomes part of the thrill.

Do you still get that thrill now then do you?

Yeah, it is exciting, especially when you get to travel and I can take one my chefs with me. Being in a new kitchen and seeing people cook in different ways, constantly being inspired, it doesn’t stop, it only stops when you choose not to be inspired anymore. If you really love the food then you must do it, there are definitely easier ways to make money but if it makes you happy do it.

You did Obsession at Northcote, what made you want to be part of that?

It is exciting, there were amazing chefs there I shared it with Angela (Hartnett) and with Lisa (Allen), and I know them both so it was a great opportunity. Networking is important, you can stay stuck in your own four walls all the time or you can go out into the world and South Africa is far away from everything. It is easier for us to come to Europe than for Europe to come to us!

And being in the UK, what do you think of British cuisine at the minute, what do you think of our chefs and what they are producing?

I think it fantastic, 20 years ago I came to London for a week, this was after I started my first menu, every day we did lunch, dinner, lunch dinner; we went everywhere. We went to Gordon Ramsay Hospital Road, The Sugar Club, we went everywhere and we ate ate ate ate, but every restaurant had fois gras with corn cakes on the menu and I am thinking what the hell, where is the originality? That was 20 years ago, everyone was serving the same kind of food, it was obviously good quality but a lot of it was the same, and I think that has also changed now, there is more uniqueness.

Back to your menu, what dish would you say sums you up, do you have one?

I think it is a combination of things that we do. We are in the height of summer now and we have these beautiful sour figs, where we take the inside flesh of the figs and we make a marshmallow of lovage and then we make our own ricotta of amasi, a soured cows milk drink, with a very airy pistachio crouton and then we dust it with a Granita of Eugenia which is a plant. I really think 95% of the population in South Africa doesn’t know that you can eat it!  We dust that over the dish which is almost like a very textural salad, like a three bite salad.

A lot of the menu is about where do you start thinking about something? So the dish I’ve just described comes from the fact we just started our own vegetable garden and a lot of these things come from our garden.

Other than your own restaurant, what is your favourite local restaurant?

One of my favourites is Bread and Wine. Neil Jewell, executive chef, is a British chef from South End on Sea who came to Africa 15 years ago and had a dream to produce everything in the restaurant himself. He started getting very serious about making charcuterie and he is really recognised in South Africa now as the charcuterie king and he makes such beautiful things.