Hendry Olivir, ‘Karoo’ chef at African Relish

I met up with Chef Hendry in the newly established vegetable garden at the African Relish Cooking School in Prince Albert. Just recently, Brett Bard designed The Bard Garden, an organic potager garden. The garden is based on permaculture principles and agro-ecological growing techniques.

Hendry has been in Prince Albert for 27 years now. So, he can be called a true Karoo chef now. He used to work with Bokkie Botha, who had a restaurant in the village and then Hendry took it over and turned it into a small restaurant-bakery. At restaurant ‘La Motte’ he was introduced to the finer cuisine. He remembers that one of his first things that he learned there was how to clean tiny quails. In 2017 he decided to join the African Relish team.

As a small boy he loved to eat and the first thing he made in the kitchen was bread, under the close scrutiny of his grandmother. So, his grandmother was his first teacher. They moved around a lot but bread baking was his daily chore, which he enjoyed a lot.

Karoo food for Hendry is simple food. It often tends to have a sweet element in it and of course there is always lots of meat involved. Vegetables are hard to find here because of the harsh climate. ‘It hasn’t really rained properly in the last 7-8 years, so it’s getting more and more difficult for farmers to produce vegetables and even the meat is getting very expensive because the life stock is also suffering.’

‘I would love to have a dinner with Reuben Riffel, I worked with him here in the kitchen, but there’s still so much he could teach me. He’s an inspirational chef for me.’

You can read more in ‘From Cape to Karoo: Eating, traveling & living’