Trivet

I cook dinner in your house

Private chef, Cape Town. One long table, twelve seats, everything made on the day.

See the last six nights

The short version

I am Rushda Isaacs. I cook private dinners in other people’s homes — mostly the southern suburbs and the Atlantic seaboard, and now and then on a farm that takes two hours to reach.

I trained in Stellenbosch and then spent six years on the line, three of them in Franschhoek on a menu of nine courses. I left because I wanted to cook for a table I could actually see.

Now it is me, one assistant, and whatever your kitchen has. I bring the knives, the pans and the plates, and you get your kitchen back cleaner than I found it.

What I cook

  • Cape Malay, cooked properly — bredie, denningvleis, a bobotie that is not sweet.
  • Fish off the Kalk Bay boats, whole, over coals, with almost nothing done to it.
  • Seven small courses when you want the evening to take four hours.
  • One large braised thing in the middle of the table when you want it to take two.
  • Vegetarian menus that are not the meat menu with the meat taken out.
  • Halaal kitchens and kosher-style kitchens. I have cooked in both and I follow your house rules.

14

Years in kitchens. Six of them on a restaurant line.

12

Seats is where the food is best. Fourteen is the limit.

640

Dinners cooked in other people’s houses since 2019.

1

Assistant. She arrives at four and she does the washing up.

Six nights

The last six dinners I cooked, in the order I cooked them.

A menu from March

  1. Bread started the night before, with butter churned that afternoon.
  2. Cold roast tomatoes, basil, a spoon of buttermilk. Out of a garden in Noordhoek.
  3. Yellowtail cured four hours, green fig, a lot of black pepper.
  4. Lamb neck braised twelve hours in wine and cumin, with the rice cooked in the same pot.
  5. Bitter leaves, olive oil, salt. That is the whole course and it is there on purpose.
  6. Malva pudding, cream, and a jug of coffee for whoever is still standing.
She cooked for thirteen of us on a stove with one working plate, and the only thing I had to do all night was open the wine.
Ilse Barnard, Newlands

Hire me

R680 a head for the seven-course menu and R520 for the shorter one. Both include the shopping, the cooking and the kitchen left cleaner than I found it. Drinks are yours. Past Stellenbosch or Somerset West I add R4 a kilometre.

It is still me, one assistant, and whatever your kitchen has. I bring the knives, the pans and the plates.

Tell me the date, how many of you there are, and what nobody at the table eats. I answer within a day, usually the same night once service is done.

Book the date

Six things and I can quote you properly.