Tasting the continent: a pan-African journey at Épicure

Mail & Guardian

26-06-2025

Eat your way around Africa: Épicure is a pan-African fine dining restaurant in the Joburg suburb of Rosebank (left) where Fathi 'Chef Coco' Reinarhz redefines food from the continent.
On a sunny yet cold Friday afternoon, I found myself in a gorgeous space on the seventh floor of the One Rosebank apartment building with panoramic views.
I was visiting Épicure, a pan-African fine dining restaurant, which I soon discovered is not just a new addition to Joburg's culinary scene but the revival of a dream its proprietor has held sacred for years.
Born in Burundi and brought up in Belgium, Fathi 'Chef Coco' Reinarhz arrived in South Africa in 2001 for what was supposed to be a six-month job.
'Three months in,' he says, 'I went back to Belgium and told my wife: 'We're moving. We found the best part of Africa.''
Épicure opened in 2018 in Morningside but closed two years later due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
'It was hard,' he admits. 'My partner pulled out. We lost the premises.
'But I always knew the vision wasn't dead. A setback isn't a failure. It's a realignment.'
His dream wasn't just to open a restaurant but to redefine African fine dining.
'Too often, when people think of African restaurants, they imagine cheap, unsafe places in dodgy neighbourhoods. But I wanted to build something refined.
'I wanted people to feel proud of African food. Proud to eat it. Proud to serve it. Proud to share it.'
That's why the menu is divided by region and why the set menu is called News of Africa.
'We hear so much bad news about Africa,' he says. 'This is a way to share good news — through taste, through beauty, through story.'
I was part of a group of people invited to savour the News of Africa menu, taking Chef Coco's lead on a journey through the diverse flavours of the continent — and it was a journey to remember.
Épicure discovered is the revival of a dream its proprietor has held sacred for years.
The first sip of the Kinshasa Kir, a champagne-based cocktail laced with ginger and a touch of pili-pili from Central Africa, leaves a sharp bitterness on my tongue.
It reminds me of Gemere, the fermented ginger drink, but this one doesn't land for me. The idea is clever, but it jars rather than opens.
I chalk it up to the risk inherent in experimentation. Not every note will sing. But the day is still young and the cocktail is just the beginning.
Next comes the prawn tail kataifi from North Africa — plump prawns wrapped in shredded phyllo pastry, fried to a crisp and served on a sweet pepper and tomato relish.
The prawns are delicious, seasoned just right, the texture somewhere between a delicate crunch and a tender bite.
It's paired with the Jasmine Mirage, a floral cocktail of vodka, pomegranate molasses, jasmine tea and rose water. A harmony of flavours. Clean, fragrant, bright.
'Ras el hanout is a term common in North African countries like Morocco that literally translates to 'best spice of the shop',' Chef Coco explains.
'So, if you go to each home, they usually have their own ras el hanout, or their unique combination of spices, and we created our own for this dish.'
Then arrives a playful twist on a South African classic: magwinya mouthfuls. These deep-fried dough balls are familiar — but these ones are stuffed with smoked chicken, spinach and peanuts.
I laugh with the diner beside me, joking about telling our mothers we went to a high-end restaurant to eat vetkoek with peanut butter. But that, perhaps, is the quiet brilliance of Chef Coco's vision.
'I want to change the narrative around African food,' he tells me later. 'People think African food can't be elegant, that it's too heavy, too rustic, too common. I want people to eat mogodu the way they eat sushi — with pride, in a beautiful space.'
The cocktail pairing here is the Dangerous Lover: tequila blanco, Aperol, naartjie and lemon. Citrus to cut through the richness, with a subtle bitterness to balance the peanut's creaminess.
I don't finish the dish — it's too filling — but the taste lingers long after.
A harmony of flavours, clean, fragrant, bright.
The next course is lamb dakhine from West Africa, a slow-cooked leg of lamb braised in a peanut sauce with beans, served with broken rice.
There is a humble nobility in this dish. Earthy and comforting. The broken rice, once considered the scraps of the rice harvest, is transformed into something triumphant.
'Peanut butter is to African cuisine what cream is to French cuisine,' Chef Coco explains. 'It's what gives our dishes their richness, their memory, their body.'
This course comes with my favourite drink of the night: Cup of Chino, made with coffee bourbon, muscovado and orange bitters.
It tastes like a gentleman's study, like polished wood and deep conversation. There's something ceremonial about it, like a toast between old friends.
The final course, taken straight from East Africa, arrives with the flourish of dessert: kilwa coconut cake served with chai ice cream.
It reminds me of ndizi, that sweet Tanzanian dish of roasted bananas infused with coconut milk, cardamom and cinnamon. The cake is soft and fragrant, the ice cream spiced and creamy. Together, they dance.
'I wanted to pay tribute to my Swahili heritage, my personal roots in East Africa,' Chef Coco says, 'especially Zanzibar, which is the world capital of spices. I wanted to bring forward your cardamom, your nutmeg, your vanilla, your star anise, in that style of authentic Swahili cuisine.
The Kilimanjaro Queen cocktail, named for the highest mountain on the continent, pairs whisky with pineapple, cumin and lemonade.
It's sweet, aromatic and gently fizzy, pulling the curtain closed on the meal with a celebratory sigh.
There is something moving about what Épicure offers. Not just good food, but a kind of homecoming. A reclamation. A deliberate insistence that African cuisine deserves to sit at the same table as French, Italian or Japanese. Not as fusion. Not as novelty. But as itself.
'This is not a trend. I want other African chefs to do this. In Cape Town. In Congo. In Chad. Wherever. We don't need to eat pasta in Chad. We need to eat us. But in places that are safe. Beautiful. Worthy.'
Chef Coco speaks with the conviction of someone who believes food can shift culture.
'Mobility is humanity,' another artist once told me. Perhaps so is flavour. Perhaps what we share across borders and kitchens and spices is what ultimately binds us.
At Épicure, I tasted a version of Africa that is complex, daring, elegant and deeply familiar. And as I left, I felt full — not just in my belly, but, in the best possible sense of the word, nourished.