How Sanza Sandile Turned Johannesburg’s Yeoville Into a Global Food Destination

“Jazz is a far higher art than cooking for me, in my mind,” he says.

We speak just after he arrives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the first stop on a six-city U.S. tour of his inner-city Johannesburg culinary enterprise, with dates in Georgia, Mississippi, LA, New York, Maryland, and North Carolina.

“So I am a jazzophile, it’s true. I’m not trying to be the Miles Davis of the kitchen – I’m touched by these 100 years of Kippie Moeketsi,” he adds, invoking the South African saxophonist and mentor to legends like Hugh Masekela and Abdullah Ibrahim.

Moeketsi never went into exile. Similarly, Sandile has remained rooted in the Rocky Street enclave of Yeoville, the neighborhood he’s turned into a destination through food and storytelling. “He played the saxophone, he played,” he says, emphasizing the raw quality of Moeketsi’s craft. “For me, home, which is just the heart, is not the physical all the time. I think home is where the food is at.”

His dinner club has hosted everyone from Rohan and Damian Marley, who were moved to tears by Sandile's space and stories, to Dave Chappelle, who came thrice in a single week. “They [Chapelle’s people] paid me to close my restaurant to go to his show, because he had enjoyed my food the day before,” he says.

“I went into YFM thinking I’m gonna talk about scripts, because I was more into film, I’d worked on Yizo-Yizo,” he says. “They realized that I can talk more than that.” Sandile started with DJ Fresh and, upon returning from a trip to Kenya, was asked by Msengana to start Harambe. “But I was always bringing apples everywhere I go,” he says, revealing a love for connecting people through food and stories.

“You could only find African food, besides South African food, in Yeoville. I think I was already somehow opening up that window to, ‘you know what, there’s amazing smells when I drive past,’” he says. He paints a place that was – and still is – a haven for different flavors.

Yeoville is a pan-African enclave nestled in the heart of Johannesburg. Like other parts of the inner city, it has weathered the city’s shifting political, economic, and cultural tides. It became a sanctuary for artists, activists, and migrants from across the continent after the end of apartheid – people drawn to its mix of street life, political debate, and late-night jazz from greats like Moses Molelekwa and Andile Yenana. But as Johannesburg’s middle class fled to the northern suburbs, Yeoville was left to grapple with urban decay, municipal neglect, and the stigma of being “too African.”

“My food concept belongs in Yeoville, as it’s always inspired by it. Yeoville is like a dream deferred; it’s a futuristic pan-African suburb that the politicians don’t support. They imagine the upper Black middle class don’t like it because ‘it’s always full of Africans, it’s chaotic.’ I like it. I think only culture can change. I always hear these socio-political complaints about Yeoville or Johannesburg suburbia, and I’m thinking, we’re cultural players, we need to bring back the music and the food,” he says.

Still, what remains is a layered and defiantly vibrant community, where corner stores sell cassava and plantain alongside rice and maize meal; where potatoes from Malawi arrive every Tuesday; where Afrobeats, reggae, hip-hop, and kwaito spill onto pavements; and where people like Sandile have kept the cosmopolitan spirit alive through food, music, and storytelling.

The Dinner Club concept gained momentum around the 2010 Soccer World Cup. “Even if I was on the radio, I’ve never been a marketer of my ideas; I was always learning. But I started a supper club [in the late 90s] when food was five rands. We used to have a house on a hill in Yeoville called Cape Town, and I would make five rand pasta, and people would come. And I would say the sauce is ten rands. I became notorious because people thought the food was very expensive at my place. But then people came because I was on the radio,” he says.

Earlier iterations of the kitchen were no more than five square meters, but Sandile has since moved to a bigger space upstairs. “I’m tagging along on this ‘Chef Sanza’ thing. I’m just a cook and a storyteller. I’m using food as a conduit to reflect on a whole lot more than food itself. I think it’s a continuation of my radio essence. Bringing food and my stories is becoming a nice continuation of what I’ve always wanted to do. Any small kitchen for me will do, or any small ingredient, as long as the people are gonna show up,” he says.

What Sandile provides is a home away from the cold, high-priced restaurant culture of Johannesburg, where there’s a clear preference in the type of person those establishments want to accommodate. “I’ve always pushed the needle a little bit about how we can dine, so my food, in its philosophy, carries a lot of hope. I’m trying to draw up this vision of what we can do when we eat,” he says.

“What about the migrants? People are cooking in small kitchens, and they’re making this food that we didn’t know the name of. And for a few years, we thought, ‘Oh, it’s too oily, it’s too fishy, who are these people, maybe they cook dogs.’ And I was always there to say, ‘Guys, I’m a Yeovillite, I’ve tasted this thing, and here I am, I’m alive,” he says. “I think it has evolved and become a full-on pan-African suburb. And it’s even more powerful because it hosts the Yeoville Dinner Club, which attracts 100 percent of people who don’t live in Yeoville. People think the place has gone down, that it has changed, but I think they’re just all crying for Whiteness – for a past that’s not even theirs.”

After so many years telling stories and preparing continental recipes, Sandile is working on a book. He says it contains a lot of “first encounters” with the dishes he prepares and the ingredients he uses. There are stories about how a conversation can reveal entire layers to a person, where they are from, what they like, and their beliefs.

“Yeoville has always been a pan-African city; it belongs to no one,” he says. “My food is about that kind of resistance, the push-back. The Gastro Smuggler (Anthony Bourdain referred to him in this manner on an episode of Parts Unknown) cookbook is about the stories of Yeoville, the foods of Yeoville, and [food] across the border. I upset Nigerians about how I cook egusi, and I upset Ethiopians when I cook t’iro. I’m appropriating these dishes and giving them a future African tasting table. This is how I want us to be – that’s what I’m trying to do, by changing them, playing with them, tweaking them.”

The U.S. trip has its origins at the Dinner Club. Four years ago, Sandile hosted a filmmaker who was in the country documenting a music tour. He followed that up with another trip, and the idea of taking Sandile's concept on the road grew wings. “He came to Joburg for about two nights, and he was like, we must do this thing. He filmed a little bit at his farewell dinner and created a promo from that footage. People who remember the brand reached out to him, and he’s been sleepless for the past couple of months organizing everything,” he says.

“The cookbook has got a lot of stories about these first encounters with these dishes or ingredients, or the idea of the Yeoville open table. You just go to the market, you show interest in the ingredient.”

“I still maintain that the food is quite simple. It’s just the story of it all, and that we’re able to traverse cultures with the food we offer. When a lot of people are gathered around the table, and they’re just looking at the food, and I’m looking at their eyes – those who dare to understand the geography of Johannesburg, those who dare to leave the comfort zones to come to Yeoville – I’m trying to honor them by presenting one of the best [experiences].”