There’s nothing that young local chef Sarah Harris enjoys more than tickling people’s taste buds!
One of the many interesting experiences Sarah had at a top London restaurant a few years ago was catering for the birthday of “Domestic Goddess” and British gourmand, Nigella Lawson, who famously said: “I am not a chef, I am not even a trained or professional cook. My qualification is as an eater.”
Sarah spent two years in London working her way up the culinary ladder, with the dream of eventually coming back home to South Africa to start her own catering business.
Sarah, who launched Harris and Homes in Durban North early in 2008, had no inkling that she would end up cooking for the rich and famous when she was a schoolgirl at St Mary’s DSG in Kloof. “When I matriculated in 2004, I applied to do a Business Science degree at Cape Town University,” Sarah said. “My mom detected that I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about doing the degree, and asked me what I’d be happy doing every day for the rest of my life. Without missing a beat, I replied, ‘cooking!’” She spent a year at Christina Martin’s School of Food and Wine in Durban, and left at the end of 2005 summa cum laude, and with a fierce determination to learn as much as she could from some of the top chefs in the UK.
After a short and rather depressing stint in a “burger type joint” in London’s outskirts, Sarah found a job as a chef de partie at Sonny’s, a small but very upmarket restaurant in Barnes, South West London. “I had no idea what work pressure was until I worked at Sonny’s,” Sarah told us. “I worked in the starter section and could never get through my list. I went home every night exhausted and in tears!” Eventually, a knight in shining white kitchen armor, Ed Wilson, a Michelin star chef, came to her rescue. “Ed came in as head chef and after a week of working with him I was back on track,” Sarah explained. “I learnt not to compromise on quality. We’d head off to Covent Garden Market at 4am to look for the very best quality and the freshest produce.” After eight months at Sonny’s, Sarah was “poached” and promoted to junior sous chef by The Wallace, a top quality restaurant in Bond Street, London.
The Wallace is the French restaurant at The Wallace Collection, a national museum displaying eighteenth and nineteenth century European paintings and French objets d’art. It opens for breakfast and lunch through to afternoon tea, and only serves dinner on a Friday and Saturday. “We also catered for private functions on a regular basis, and the restaurant was popular with the rich and famous,” Sarah explained.
Nigella Lawson celebrated her birthday at the restaurant with a three course menu. Dishes included poulet Wallace (chicken stuffed with brioche and foie gras) and loup de mer (sea bass stuffed with confit, fennel and fresh basil and coated with a salt crust). A Russian billionaire also made a big splash spending thousands of pounds celebrating his 50th birthday with 300 guests. The meal consisted of eight courses of the most expensive dishes on the menu, including two huge loaves of pate de foie gras per table and a four-tiered cake. George W Bush was another guest at the restaurant, and the editor of Vogue UK had his wedding reception there.
Sarah found during her year at The Wallace that she thrived under the pressure of working in a top class restaurant. “The menu was massive and sometimes we had up to 350 covers for lunch. The kitchen, under Michelin star chef Thierry Laborde, was extremely well structured and food was prepped and plated with utmost efficiency. Spending a year at the Wallace was an amazing learning experience and, whereas at Sonny’s I learnt about food, at the Wallace it was all about management and the rudiments of running a top class restaurant.”
With her UK experience tucked neatly under her chef’s apron, Sarah returned home at the beginning of 2008 to start her business. “My mom helped me with my first few functions and now I contract out for help in the kitchen.”
She specialises in cocktail and dinner parties, but has catered for large functions at the ICC, has a wedding to cater for in the near future, and will be doing all the breakfasts for the Lions rugby players when they play the Durban leg of their tour in June.
Useful number: Contact Sarah at 074 183 8745