Women Wednesday Profile of the Week – Portia de Smidt – South Africa

Portia de Smidt and her husband Jason knew that opening a restaurant of African food in Cape Town would not be an easy task, especially for a young interracial couple, but they decided to take the plunge.

It was 1992, and they felt that people were uneasy about going to eat at a place run by a mixed couple.

At the time, it was also considered much more chic in Cape Town to taste Italian or French cuisine.

But 20 years on, their Africa Cafe has evolved into one of the most popular restaurants in South Africa’s most cosmopolitan city.

Mrs De Smidt, who is also the chef, says that their entrepreneurial adventure has had more highs than lows.

“We started in a recession and also people didn’t know African food before, so it was difficult to start something that people were not exposed to in the beginning – those were the lows,” she told the BBC African Dream series.

“A few things were difficult because we are a mixed couple – that was a bit of a low – people were a bit apprehensive and initially we wanted to be a restaurant that served students but we found that we had more and more tourists because tourists said: ‘We’ve had Italian, we’ve had French, we want something different, we’re in Africa, we must have some African food’, and that’s how they came to us,” she added.

According to her, the highs included doing something different, making people taste food they had not had before, and travelling.

“We had to travel more to get new recipes. We travelled through different countries in Africa meeting different people, exciting ingredients and exciting cultures we encountered, and brought that back and tried to kind of encapsulate that in the different food and dishes that I subsequently served,” she explained.

(source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-17101794 )