Eight hours. That is how long Wandile Mabaso plans to give the goat. Time for it to soften in a tomato broth, for his own jollof spice mix to work its way through the meat, for the sort of flavour that makes conversation pause while someone goes back for another forkful. Alongside it, a kelewele mousse, his interpretation of Ghana’s much loved spiced plantain. Curious? You should be.
The South African chef is coming to the Barbados Food and Rum Festival, and he has a delicious journey in mind. From 5 to 8 November 2026, an island celebrated as the culinary capital of the Caribbean will welcome his imagination to its table. Later that month, on 30 November, Barbados marks 60 years of Independence and five years as a republic. His arrival brings an opportunity to celebrate the island’s African connections through the very pleasurable business of eating.
Mabaso wants to take diners on a journey from Africa to the Caribbean. His starting point is personal, shaped by a childhood in Soweto, years in demanding international kitchens and an enduring fascination with what happens when familiar ingredients meet fresh ideas.
Before there was a chef’s jacket, there was a drawing. He was about ten when he sketched his dream restaurant, without quite knowing that the life he was imagining could become a profession.
“I remember that drawing vividly,” he says. “I had no idea what a chef was.”
His earliest cooking lessons were rather less formal than the kitchens he would later enter. He remembers playing football in the streets of Soweto, catching pigeons with friends when hunger struck and cooking them. An uncle who had worked for an Indian family began teaching him how to season the birds with spices.
“I fell in love with the art of transforming food at that age.”
There it was, the discovery that something could taste entirely different with the right attention. Herbs and spices became part of his vocabulary. He still reaches for those early flavours, refining them with the skills he has gathered since. The boy with the drawing remains very much involved.
New York widened his sense of what was possible. Working with talented French chefs and encountering the standards of Michelin starred kitchens helped him recognise a place for his artistic instincts within the discipline of cooking. His route later took him to Le Meurice Alain Ducasse in Paris, before he returned to South Africa.
“I was always an artist at heart,” he says.
First came mastering the craft. Then came the freedom to express himself through it. At Les Créatifs, the Johannesburg restaurant he founded, African food traditions and classical French technique meet in a space that also celebrates contemporary art. He was named Chef of the Year at the 2022 Luxe Restaurant Awards. This year brought selection for the Yale Directors Forum, a fellowship connecting leaders working in cultural heritage across Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
That recognition speaks to an interest that reaches beyond what looks beautiful on a plate. Mabaso is concerned with the survival of food traditions, the ingredients that carry them and the knowledge needed to keep using them. His ambitions include a museum devoted to that heritage.
“We are also looking into preserving more of our culinary heritage and soon create Africa’s first food museum,” he says.
“I am still evolving today as a chef,” he says.
His work in Ghana has opened another chapter. At Nnipa in East Legon, Accra, he brings South African and Ghanaian cooking into conversation. The ingredients he plans to bring to Barbados give a tantalising glimpse of that exchange. There is Ashanti chocolate from Kumasi, salt from Ada and fermentations from Johannesburg. Each comes with its own possibilities, and he is keeping a little of the surprise for the occasion.
He is just as interested in what he will find here. Barbados’s seafood culture and local ingredients are high on his list of things to explore. There is something especially appealing about a visiting chef arriving with such experience and still wanting to discover what someone else has in the kitchen.
For Barbados, whose food culture carries deep West African influences alongside other traditions, that curiosity offers fertile ground. A familiar ingredient can lead to an unfamiliar preparation. A taste can prompt a question about how another family cooks it, or what another country calls it. Across the festival, Barbadian chefs and mixologists will be telling their own stories through food and rum. Mabaso adds a distinctive voice to that gathering.
Which brings us back to the goat. The long cooking, the tomato broth, the promise of spice running through tender meat. Then the kelewele mousse, taking a favourite Ghanaian flavour into a different texture. It is a preview with enough detail to sharpen the appetite and enough held back to make the first taste worth waiting for.
Mabaso is among the international chefs advertised for Liquid Gold Feast on Sunday 8 November 2026 at 7 p.m. at CARIFESTA House, Waterford. With “These Fields and Hills” as its theme, the evening offers a fitting setting for a chef whose cooking keeps returning to the land and the memories it holds.
November is drawing closer. Somewhere between that childhood sketch in Soweto and a festival plate in Barbados lies a lifetime of learning how to make food speak. Wandile Mabaso is bringing a story worth sitting down for.
This November, come and taste it for yourself.
