Durban - Curry-Bay City

From the journal of Chefs Victor and Kim... Inaugural Bill Gallagher Young chefs Forum Tour 2015 

Durban - Curry-Bay city.

After landing in Durban, we check in to Elangeni & Maharani hotel.

A warm greet by executive chef, Shaun. We have general site seeing of the beach around the hotel. We tour the Sun Coast Casino Durban and have a simple dinner. 

The next morning, we have breakfast at Verve & Vigor restaurant which is the Maharani all day dining restaurant. After breakfast, we went to Unilever Food Solution and met the executive chef, Craig Elliott. We tour the R&D kitchen and the food solution office. After the tour at Unilever, we left to site see at Hops Ballito and sample local beers, Black Label and Castle beers. We return to hotel and went for dinner at  Grill Jichana, Elangeni hotel. 

The next day, we were invited to Panorama cafe at Elangeni hotel for breakfast, we met the Shaun and we have a tour for the whole facilities of the property. After breakfast, we went uShaka water theme park & aquarium. We took a tour of all the restaurants & kiosk by executive chef Warren. At that evening, we were invited by Craig Elliott to his house to have wood fire pizza dinner. We met some other chefs from Unilever, South African Chef Association, Durban Convention Centre. We learned the curries that is in green, red & yellow. How to update certification between working chefs & student chefs. 

The next day, after the breakfast we went to Beverly Hills, is a 5 star hotel since opening and is 51years old. Also the first hotel of Tsogo Sun group. We met executive chef, Tony Knocke and give us a brief tour to the 51 years old kitchen but still function well that running breakfast, lunch, high tea, fine dining dinner that feed 140 covers. We had our one last curry before we heading to airport to Johannesburg. 

Arrives at Johannesburg, we were welcome by Adrian at Melrose Arch hotel by African Pride. He gave us brief tour to the kitchen & the rest of the property. We met the sous chef & the dinner was prepared by the sous chef. 

We are looking forward to the next few days, and we going to SAXON, lion park, Moyo restaurant, HTA Culinary school, meet SACA president Stephen Billingham and of course Dr. Billy Gallagher. 

Kim & Victor.