Six burners, twelve stools.

A teaching kitchen in Lorentzville. You cook it, you eat it, and on Tuesday you can do it again at home.

See the classes

Just turn up

Nobody here was born knowing how to cook.

Two and a half hours

Half past six on a weeknight, ten in the morning on a Saturday. You are out by nine, and you have eaten.

Twelve stools, no more

One bench, twelve people, two of us teaching. Nobody stands at the back watching somebody else do the chopping.

Bring nothing

Knives, boards, pans, aprons and the ingredients are here. Closed shoes and tied-back hair are the only things we ask you for.

We shop on the morning

Vegetables off the market gardens up the road, meat from the butchery on Kimberley Road, and whatever the fishmonger in Bez Valley actually had.

The board goes up on the first

Every class for the month, dated, on the wall and on this page. Club members choose their nights two days before anyone else.

You eat what you made

It all goes on the bench at the end and we sit down with it. Bring your own wine — the glasses are ours.

The bench came out of a canteen in Vereeniging

It is four and a half metres of stainless steel that fed shift workers at a steel plant for thirty-odd years. We bought it off a scrap dealer in Booysens in 2021, cut a metre off one end, put six burners down the middle and twelve stools around it. The dents are still in it and we have left them there. The rule at this bench is that everybody cooks. There is no demonstration table and nowhere to sit and take notes. If there are twelve of you there are twelve boards out and twelve knives on them, and Lindiwe and I walk the bench for the whole two and a half hours. You will burn something at some point. Everybody does, and after that you know what it smells like just before it happens.

On the board

Six classes. Do one, do all six, do the same one twice.

Fire and coalsTuesdays · lighting it, banking it, cooking on it

Bread and doughsWednesdays · you leave with a starter of your own

Curry and masalaThursdays · roasting and grinding your own spice

Knife workSaturday mornings · one knife, six cuts, no rush

PreservingAlternate Mondays · atchar, pickles, jam, jars to take

Pastry and tartsSunday afternoons · shortcrust, rough puff, choux

What people can make now without looking it up

I have made the same roti eleven times since that Thursday and I have not opened the recipe once. The trick was the resting, and nobody had ever told me that.

Farhana Ebrahim · Kensington

My wife booked it for my sixtieth as a joke. Six months on I am the one who does Sunday lunch, and I do it without a phone propped up on the counter.

Gerhard Steyn · Bez Valley

Bread was the one thing that frightened me. There is a jar of starter on my fridge shelf now that is older than my youngest, and it has never let me down.

Palesa Mahlangu · Troyeville

How the club works

The board goes up on the first of the month. Members pick their nights two days before the seats open to everybody else.
Miss a night and the seat rolls over into the next month. It rolls once, so use it before it goes.
Swap your seat with somebody else on the list or give it away. Tell us the name and we will cook for them instead.
No contract and no sign-up fee. Say the word before the 25th and next month simply does not run.

What a stool costs

Ingredients, apron, the knife you use and the plate at the end are all in the price. Bring your own wine.

One class

R450 / a class

Any class on the board
Ingredients, apron and knives
You eat what you cooked
Paid when you book

Book a class

Two a month

R780 / a month

Two seats a month, any nights
First pick before the board opens
One rollover if you miss
A guest with you once a quarter

Join the club

Four a month

R1 400 / a month

Four seats a month, any nights
First pick and a standing stool
One rollover if you miss
A guest with you on any night
The printed file of everything we cook

Join the club

Phone the kitchen and ask

Somebody is on the bench most afternoons from two. If you cannot decide where to start, tell us what you already cook at home and we will tell you which night to take.

011 614 2087

Book a bench

Skottel · 34 Ophir Street, Lorentzville, Johannesburg 2094 011 614 2087 · WhatsApp 082 449 1136 kombuis@skottel.co.za The phone is answered between two and six. Before that we are shopping and after that we are at the bench.