Chef Sihle Kweza is the founder of Gawulo Lifestyle, an innovative catering food and beverage consultancy company that uses state-of-the-art cooking and creativity techniques to enhance its dishes.
Born and raised in Cape Town, Kweza's career in food began in 2014, when he started working at Checkers, and from there he knew he wanted to be on top of the food pyramid.
In 2015 Kweza joined the Spur Canal Walk Shopping Centre team as a griller, which was his first platform on his journey, which soon became his destiny. In 2017 he joined Northlink College where he studied hospitality and in 2018 he got a chance to work at the Taj Hotel and at Tasha’s.
Later that year Kweza partnered with a friend and started Gawulo Lifestyle, which then was simply a restaurant providing food to their clients. The hunger to leave a mark and to go big grew deeper, and that is when he started shifting his mindset from a “career chef” to more of an “entrepreneurial chef”, meaning he started doing things on his own from scratch; from product inventory to understanding the ingredient nutritional value of every ingredient he used.
As the only founder left, Kweza started changing his recipes from being just “nice food” to more healthy meals, focusing on building well-being for consumers.
“The thought behind the brand was to provide an upper-class restaurant in the township that promotes healthy and organic food consumption, tasty and well-presented food plating.
“We then ventured into making our own branded products which are organic and reduce the risks of food-caused diseases,” he said.
Describing their menu, Kweza said it is classy and trendy and it has a taste of a few inventions that they have managed to introduce.
“To mention a few, it would be waffle sandwiches, which were a new thing to many, to have a waffle as a base of a sandwich, and introducing meals like herbed quarter leg chicken, steamed veggies, garlic bread bars, with white corn with mint-flavoured mushroom sauce.
“The menu is influenced by the local eating with an upper culinary touch, which separates us from the rest, turning your regular ingredients into a more fine and classy taste and an infusion of African locally grown herbs and spices,” he said.
Gawulo Lifestyle currently operates as a “ghost kitchen”, and is focused on takeaway orders and the distribution of their products, which are organic original banana bread, chocolate banana bread, banana bread rusks, and vegan granola.
For more information, you can visit their website: www.gawulolifestyle.co.za.