Nick Hamman

Sit under a chandelier in Sandton and we will happily pay R250 for a pizza. We do it without flinching. There is nothing wrong with that. I love pizza. It carries generations of craft: the fermentation of dough, the obsessive pursuit of balance. Italians have every right to be proud of what their people have made, protected and shared with the world. In 2017, UNESCO inscribed the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo as intangible cultural heritage. Food does not acquire meaning only when an institution gives it a certificate. But meaning does acquire power when people insist on naming it, recording it, paying for it and putting it on a pedestal. Food is political because belonging is political. It tells us whose childhood counts as nostalgia, whose technique counts as expertise and whose everyday meal is allowed to become a national treasure. We often speak about food from elsewhere with reverence, then speak about our own food as if familiarity has made it ordinary. Take inyama yenhloko. Depending on the language, place and person, you may spell it as inyama yentloko in isiXhosa, inyama yenhloko in isiZulu or simply intloko/inhloko. The plain translation—head meat—can sound confrontational to somebody raised to encounter meat only after it has been separated from the animal and sealed beneath plastic. On the plate, it is something else entirely: cheek, tongue and the soft, fatty seams around bone, cooked slowly until connective tissue becomes silk and the broth carries the deep,

Some of Johannesburg’s most important histories are hiding in plain sight. I was reminded of that recently, sitting around a table at Xiang Restaurant in Edenvale, celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Chinese Association (Gauteng) Women’s Federation. Nine courses stretched over a long afternoon with traditional dress, music, singing and education. The Chinese Association, or TCA, was established in Johannesburg in 1903, originally as the Transvaal Chinese Association, representing a community of only about 900 people. Within a few years its members were resisting laws requiring Chinese and Indian residents to register and be fingerprinted. Later, under apartheid, Chinese South Africans faced discrimination affecting everything from property ownership and education to business, movement, marriage and voting rights.  That history is important because often minority histories become invisible, not because nothing happened, but because there were fewer people around to make sure their stories were heard. Nick HammanTraditional Chinese lion dance The Women’s Federation was established in 2006, but its work is connected to that much longer tradition of persistence. Under women like longtime chair Shirleen Man, resistance has often taken a quieter form: caring for elderly people, preserving culture, fundraising, supporting children, organising food and blanket drives, collecting sanitary products and helping communities far beyond the Chinese community itself. In 2025, TCA volu

This year, Red Chamber turned 37 and PRON marks 11 years. Anyone in the restaurant game will tell you that this is a herculean feat. Restaurants are difficult things to keep alive, yet for almost four decades Emma Chen has been feeding Joburgers food that tastes unmistakably like her own history. Red Chamber’s Peking duck is regularly spoken about as the best in the city. The skin comes lacquered and crisp, ready to be folded into a thin pancake with cucumber, spring onion and hoisin sauce. There are now parents who first ate at Red Chamber in the 1990s returning with their own children. Back then, Johannesburg’s understanding of Chinese food was far narrower than it is today. Ingredients were difficult to find. News of a shipment of fresh tofu would move through the Chinese community, and Chen would make sure some of it found its way into her kitchen. Dim sum, now a familiar part of the city’s weekend eating, was still new to most local diners. Chen was among the people who helped put it on Johannesburg tables. Nick HammanEmma Chen and Nick Hamman Her story begins in post-war Taiwan. Chen’s parents came from northern China, their lives reshaped by the Civil War and the Kuomintang retreat to the island. Emma and her sister grew up in a military dependants’ settlement, surrounded by families who had arrived from different parts of China. The cooking reflected that: northern food at home, Taiwanese ingredients outside it, and Sichuan flavours brought into the camps by soldier

A hollowed-out loaf of white bread, filled with curry and eaten with your hands. The exact origin story is still debated, but the most consistent history points to Durban’s Indian community around the 1940s, linking the word “bunny” to the Bania or Baniya, merchant class. What is not up for debate is that this was food born out of ingenuity, exclusion, community, and deep flavour. A portable meal that turned limited resources into something iconic. And that is why searching for a great bunny chow outside of Durban is dangerous work. People are protective for good reason. So yes, Joburg has a lot to prove here. But these five spots seriously did. Nick Hamman is a South African broadcaster, storyteller, and food-culture creator. He is the host of 5FM’s national breakfast show, 5 Breakfast, and the creator of Hammy Eats, a platform dedicated to discovering the people, places, and stories behind South African food. Follow Time Out Johannesburg on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram! While you're at it, sign up for our newsletter to receive even more of the best of your city.

There are plenty of places to get a warm drink in Johannesburg. These aren't those places. This list isn't about latte art or cafés that look like they were designed for first dates that will never go anywhere. This list is about places with stories. Places where a cup of coffee, tea or chai comes with culture, history, community and, more often than not, actual value for money. Johannesburg might be one of the best cities in the world for warm drinks. Within an hour you can drink Ethiopian coffee, Taiwanese milk tea, Chinese jasmine tea, Turkish coffee, masala coffee and a township cappuccino without ever leaving the 011. Not every great warm drink in Johannesburg comes from a trendy café with exposed brick walls and a R70 flat white. Some come from Chinese tea rooms hidden in Cyrildene, Ethiopian restaurants in Milpark, Turkish cafés in Fordsburg and ambitious young entrepreneurs building something special in Alexandra. So before you order another forgettable flat white, consider this your invitation to explore. Nick Hamman is a South African broadcaster, storyteller, and food-culture creator. He is the host of 5FM’s national breakfast show, 5 Breakfast, and the creator of Hammy Eats, a platform dedicated to discovering the people, places, and stories behind South African food. Follow Time Out Johannesburg on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram! While you're at it, sign up for our newsletter to receive even more of the best of your city.

Johannesburg is South Africa’s real global African city. Gold pulled people here in 1886. Since then, people have arrived for work, safety, school fees, second chances, family, faith, love, and survival. After the nineties, Joburg opened itself again, this time to more of our neighbours from the African continent. I think one of the best ways to understand Johannesburg is to eat with the people who came here to build new lives, carrying the knowledge of what they ate back home. Food travels when people do. Recipes survive borders. Restaurants become a communal space where people can connect around a shared understanding of a plate. So, for Africa Month, I wanted to share the places in Joburg where you can taste the continent without leaving the city. Go respectfully. Ask questions. Pay properly. Eat with your hands when that is how the food is meant to be eaten. And remember that someone’s everyday lunch may be the thing that teaches you more about Joburg than you ever thought possible. Below are 11 of my favourite places to experience African food in Johannesburg. Nick Hamman is a South African broadcaster, storyteller, and food-culture creator. He is the host of 5FM’s national breakfast show, 5 Breakfast, and the creator of Hammy Eats, a platform dedicated to discovering the people, places, and stories behind South African food. Follow Time Out Johannesburg on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram! While you're at it, sign up for our newsletter to receive even more of the best o

The first time I stopped at The Fat Butcher, my life was packed into a car. My father and I were driving from Cape Town to Johannesburg. He would take the train back to Cape Town, and I would carry on into the City of Gold to begin the uncertain business of becoming a man. I did not have much of a plan. I had the specific kind of confidence available only to the young and the untested. The night before, we had slept on our family farm near Three Sisters. We ate breakfast in Colesberg, pointed the car north and settled into N1. Then the signs began. THE BEST BILTONG IN SOUTH AFRICA. GEEL VET. They start working on you kilometres before Ventersburg. Any South African who has done enough road knows the feeling: the words pass through the windscreen and connect directly to the salivary glands. Ventersburg is a small Free State town on the N1, the kind many travellers know first as a distance marker between larger places. The Fat Butcher reverses that relationship. Suddenly, the town is not something you pass on the way to the story. It is a reason to interrupt the story. Facebook: The Fat ButcherThe Fat Butcher I walked in for the first time more than a decade ago. I have returned whenever I get the chance: visits to my wife’s parents on their farm, September heritage tours for radio, drives down to Cape Town and drives back up again. As you walk in, rows of biltong hang above you in a magnificent cured-meat curtain. A sign declares MOERSE LEKKER BILTONG, which is true. Behind

When most people hear the word Soweto, their minds probably go to the places we all know: Vilakazi Street, where two Nobel Peace Prize winners once had homes; June 16, 1976, and the young people whose resistance sent images and headlines around the world; Orlando, Hector Pieterson and the history that made this township one of the most recognisable places in South Africa. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. These are stories that deserve to be told around the world. Soweto is fundamental to the story of South Africa, and kasi culture is an inseparable part of what makes this country what it is. But Soweto is enormous, and some parts of it are seen far less than others. One of those places is Emdeni, a neighbourhood on the outer reaches of Soweto that feels noticeably removed from the parts most visitors tend to know. As I drove there for the first time, I was struck by just how deep into Soweto I was going. Chickens were being sold alongside the road, goats wandered through the streets, and the scenery became increasingly different from the Soweto that so often appears in travel guides and television features. I was heading there because a young man named Mfundo Gasa had been messaging me on social media for some time, asking me to come and try his food. Mfundo is the founder of Eli Foods and Events, a food business he runs from his family home in Emdeni, and when I arrived, one of the first things that stood out to me was the number of young people sitting around on

Few places show you Johannesburg as clearly as Alexandra. Stand in Alex and look across the highway. Sandton is right there: towers, restaurants, money and the confident architecture of “Africa’s richest square mile”. Then turn around and you are standing in one of Johannesburg’s oldest townships, established in 1912 and one of the rare urban areas where Black South Africans could historically own land under freehold title, while Blacks elsewhere grappled with whatever variation of the Group Areas Act was prevalent at the time. One of the only surviving townships that didn't get demolished when Sophiatown, Disttict Six, Cato Manor and other Black residential areas were met with this fate, Alex has history, culture, talent and next-level entrepreneurial energy. What it needs is more opportunities to shine. On Saturday, 29 August, that is exactly what my friend Gift Sedibeng is trying to create when Siga Culinary Restaurant brings back its Culinary Experience in East Bank. Gift’s story is one I love. After spending two years working and training in San Antonio, Texas, he came home and decided Mexican food did not need to belong exclusively to suburban restaurant strips. He created what he calls MexiKasi: tacos, nachos, quesadillas and Mexican flavours reworked through an Alexandra lens. His outrageous kota burrito even finished second at the 2023 Soweto Kota Festival. Nick HammanGift Sedibeng, runner up of the 2023 Soweto Kota Festival For one day, the area outside Siga becom

Vosloorus has never lacked good food. There is pap, meat sizzling over open flames, kotas large enough to require structural engineering and some genuinely inventive cooking happening in backyards, containers and small roadside kitchens. It’s an exciting, over overlooked township with a rich and complex history and I’d definitely recommend a visit if you’ve never been. What you don't necessarily expect to find is a woman quietly trying to convince her neighbourhood to eat more wraps Her name is Thobile Sibeko. Thobile has the kind of energy you notice immediately when she walks into the room. She is warm, funny, determined and deeply serious about what she is building. Her business, Tobs Wraps, sits on the corner of Moagi and Bierman roads in Vosloorus, and the story behind how it all began is among the most inspiring I’ve encountered on my travels The idea began taking shape  when she starting thinking more seriously about the quality of fast food available in townships. Working in the corporate world at the team, she took a massive risk by leaving her job and launching into a new business. Then Covid arrived. Like thousands of entrepreneurs across South Africa, the plan suddenly had to change. Resources were limited, every cent needed to count and complicated menus made little sense. Thankfully wraps are beautifully simple. Flour. Water. Oil. Heat. Sometimes limitations force you to become more creative. Thobile opened the business with just R7,000 and kept adapting. Lockdo

By the time Nuraan arrives in Westbury, people are already waiting. The food that afternoon was mutton biryani, prepared by a restaurant in Fordsburg. Pensioners arrive carrying containers. Children come running as soon as the school bell rings. A group of teenage boys stands a little further back until serving begins. Nuraan runs Hunger Has No Religion from what used to be her family home in Coronationville, next to Westbury. With the support of volunteers, local businesses, and community members, she prepares and distributes meals to people across the area. Coronationville and Westbury have been among the Joburg communities hardest hit by gangsterism. When violence breaks out, Nuraan sets up feeding stations close to where the conflict is happening. She takes food into areas where tensions are high and where many outsiders would be reluctant to go. It is a serious personal risk, but she believes these feeding stations can create neutral ground. Rival gang members sometimes end up standing in the same queue, receiving food from the same pot. For a brief moment, people who may otherwise see one another as enemies share the same space peacefully. Nuraan is not naive about what is happening around her. She understands the danger. Her approach is simply that hunger cuts through many of the divisions in the community. While the food is being served, the priority is making sure everyone eats. Nick HammanCoronationville community leader Nuraan Esack Gain is using feeding stations

I have been waiting to write this article. On 3 July, I wrote about And Fries, the brilliant Mofolo South burger business founded by local creative and entrepreneur Lwazi Madonsela, after a driver crashed into its store and fled. Completely wrecking the store, this was the kind of thing that a big chain could have taken on the chin, but for a small-township business, it meant everyone was put on life support. One thing about us South Africans is that when we get behind something, magic can happen. A few days later, I went back. People had shared the story, tagged friends and companies, donated what they could and arrived hungry when the team began cooking from a food truck outside the damaged store. The first pop-up sold out. Staff worked between rubble and construction materials, handmade brioche buns were being filled again, and a business that had every reason to disappear refused to do so.  Now, the news we have all been waiting for: And Fries officially reopened on Sunday, 26 July. SuppliedAnd Fries officially reopened There is something deeply moving about seeing those doors open again. And now, the real journey to what I have no doubt will be an amazing story begins. Go to And Fries. Order the Aioli Burger, with crunchy fried chicken, cheese, creamy slaw, house pickles and signature aioli, packed into one of those soft handmade brioche buns. Try the Spicy Ranch Burger if you want hot honey, ranch and a little more chaos. Get the loaded fries. Arrive hungry.  Small bu

Johannesburg is filled with extraordinary restaurants from around the world. They hide behind ordinary shopfronts, inside shopping centres and in parts of the city most people seldom go. Some of the best meals I have eaten here have started with me wondering whether I have arrived at the right address. Shinya Izakaya is one of those places. Hidden in Rivonia, an area establishing itself as one of Johannesburg’s most exciting destinations for Asian food, Shinya may be the coolest Japanese restaurant I have visited in South Africa. For a long time, many South Africans understood Japanese food almost entirely through sushi. California rolls, salmon roses and all-you-can-eat platters became our entry point into one of the world’s most complex and exciting food cultures. There is nothing wrong with loving sushi, but it represents only one small part of an enormous culinary landscape. Nick HammanShinya Izakaya's shrimp dumplings Shinya offers something different. This is not hushed fine dining, but rather a far more relaxed and social Japanese tradition. Shinya translates roughly to “deep into the night”, while an izakaya is Japan’s answer to the neighbourhood pub. It is part bar, part restaurant and the spot you hit after a night out when you aren’t ready to go home yet. Historically, sake merchants began inviting customers to sit down and enjoy something small to eat while they drank. Over time, these shops developed into informal gathering places where patrons could unwind ove

Every now and then, a sandwich shuts me up. When you take a bite, stop chewing for a moment and look directly at the person next to you, because somebody else needs to understand the magnitude of what has just happened. That was my reaction to the Argentinian-inspired beef and chimichurri sandwich from Mestizo Taste Latino. It begins with slow-cooked beef brisket, sliced into tender ribbons and piled generously into a fresh Portuguese roll. There is melted mozzarella, a scattering of herbs and enough chimichurri to soak into the bread without destroying its structure. The beef is rich, soft, and savoury. The cheese adds warmth and indulgence, while the chimichurri cuts straight through everything with garlic, vinegar, herbs and a gentle chilli bite. Traditionally, Argentina’s most famous green sauce combines ingredients including parsley, oregano, garlic, vinegar, chilli and oil, exactly the kind of sharp, fragrant combination that makes fatty, fire-cooked meat taste even better.  It is an outrageous sandwich. The sort that leaves sauce running down your hands and briefly makes you resent every less exciting lunch you have eaten before it. Nick HammanMestizo Taste Latino's Argentinian-inspired beef and chimichurri sandwich But as remarkable as the food is, the story behind it might be even better. A South African-Peruvian love story Mestizo is the work of husband-and-wife team Farzana ‘Zana’ Alvarado and César Alvarado, two people whose lives, cultures and talents collided

Imagine being 24 and trusted to prepare food for Nelson Mandela. Not just food for a president, but food for a man who had spent 27 years in prison, separated from his family, his home and many of the flavours that had formed him. That responsibility fell, in part, to a young Eastern Cape chef named Andile Somdaka, who became one of the chefs entrusted with cooking for the father of democratic South Africa. He would later also cook for President Thabo Mbeki. Andile has since become my friend, but every time I hear him speak about those years, I am struck by the scale of the task placed in his hands. Madiba did not need someone to introduce him to expensive ingredients or complicated fine dining. He needed someone who knew the food of the Eastern Cape because he had grown up eating it too. Nick Hamman24-year-old Andile Somdakao preparing food Andile recalls preparing a simple maize-meal porridge with milk, water and butter for Madiba. At lunchtime, Mandela enjoyed fish, particularly grilled or poached, served with roasted vegetables. His tastes were comforting, modest and connected to his home. A meal doesn’t need to be luxurious to be significant. Sometimes the most powerful thing a chef can put on a plate is something you recognise from your past: the smell you remember, the texture you grew up with and the flavour that briefly transports you back to the people and places that made you. Today, Andile carries that philosophy into Eziko, his traditional African restaurant a

The bottles arrive empty. By the time they leave the production line in Johannesburg South, they are bright red, blush pink, green and gold; filled, capped and labelled for weddings, dinner tables and nights out where, for once, the person not drinking alcohol gets something that does not feel like a consolation prize. I’m standing beside Nabeelah Bahadur, a 26-year-old accountant by training who now describes herself as a manufacturer, entrepreneur and “overall hustler”. She co-founded La Cabonada with members of her family after spotting a gap that seems obvious once somebody points it out: why are people who do not drink so often given the least interesting drink in the room? Behind us, the process begins with properly treating the water. The bottles are cleaned, sterilised and moved along the line. Flavours are measured, machinery hisses, and every part of the process has to happen consistently. There is something reassuringly accountant-like about the way Nabeelah approaches it all. She understands that a dream only becomes a real business when the numbers, process and product work together. But what she is building is also surprisingly emotional. It is about allowing people to participate without having to explain themselves. La Cabonada’s core range consists of seven ready-to-drink, non-alcoholic, halaal, and vegan carbonated mocktails, packaged in 275ml glass bottles. The flavours travel: Midnight Cherry takes inspiration from Turkey; Ispahan combines lychee and rose

When I first wrote about And Fries, the future looked brutally uncertain. A driver had crashed into its Mofolo South store and fled, leaving a young township business with serious damage and a repair bill that would have seen many giving up. This isn’t a giant franchise with a legal department, a national maintenance team and enough money to absorb a few difficult months. It is a proudly Sowetan business built carefully, creatively and brick by brick by Lwazi Madonsela and his team. I asked South Africa to help. And South Africa did. The story we shared travelled far beyond the people who already knew And Fries. Thousands of people shared it, liked it, commented, tagged companies and, most importantly, donated real money. We have all seen stories go viral. We watch, feel something, leave a heart emoji and move on to the next thing. This time, people opened their banking apps. They sent what they could. They showed a young entrepreneur that the country had not forgotten him. The support gave Lwazi and his team more than money. It gave them momentum and the will to carry on. Rather than waiting for the entire store to be repaired, they got the food truck going and created a pop-up outside the damaged premises. The first one sold out. Friends arrived to DJ. The staff got back to work between the rubble, repairs and construction materials. Burgers were being assembled metres away from the physical evidence of everything that had happened. I went back for the next pop-up because I

Pork belly, mustard mash, the freshest vegetables, a fennel jus I’d happily order again tomorrow. The kind of lunch that, had it been served to me in an expensive restaurant with crisp linen and someone topping up my water every few minutes, I would have been none the wiser. But this meal wasn’t made in a restaurant. It was prepared for me by the Year 4 learners at EduStreams in Midrand, a nonprofit school for students who learn differently. And as good as the food was, and it really was that good, the story behind it is what stayed with me most. EduStreams was founded by Wendy Roux in 2022, born out of the very personal need to find the right educational environment for her own child. As a new dad, I feel stories like this differently now. You understand, in a much deeper way, what a parent will do when their child needs something the world is not giving them. SuppliedWendy Roux, founder of EduStreams Their motto is “No Child Left Behind”, and walking through the school with Head of School Alan Nambiar, a lifelong educator with a background in psychology, you can feel that this is not just a line on a wall. It is the whole point of the place. In the gardens, learners are gaining agricultural skills, with much of what they grow finding its way into the kitchen. In the woodworking area, they make pieces that can be sold to raise money for the school. In the arts centre, you see young people light up because they have been given a way to show what they can do. And then there