10: Chef Tips With Lesego Semenya

In this instalment of #AndilesTake, I catch up with my mate, Chef Lesego Semenya, a year and a half or so after he first shared the vision for his LesDaChef fine dining brand with me. I'm fascinated by the level of focus and intentionality this Soweto-native, and Prue Leith Chefs Academy graduate in Centurion brings to his culinary hustle, and I take great pleasure in celebrating the fact that since we last spoke on mic, Les has been named one of the Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans, dubbed a rising star by House & Leisure, appointed consulting chef to a number of leading luxury gourmet food and drink brands, recruited as resident culinary expert at a handful of South Africa’s leading radio stations and tv networks, extended his reach on social media and now serves as a judge on SABC 3’s prime time tv show, Top Chef South Africa. That said, I consider his greatest achievement to be the fact that despite all the success he's enjoyed, Les remains as genuine and down-to earth as when I first met him at a killer gourmet home cook-out he hosted six odd years ago. Music Credits: Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Music licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0