|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Home. Humility. Harvest. These words, etched on a peekaboo tangerine perspex Hue Café sign, welcome you to Durban, South Africa’s hottest new coffee, culinary, art, music, dance, film, hangout, space.
“A community experience” is what owner, founder, chef, TikTok star turned TV actor Lindah Majola had in mind when he bought a semi-derelict house down a narrow side road in what, for many of us, is our favorite South African city.
Inside, the décor is eclectic. A chandelier. Velvet couches. Majola’s vision was to have people gather, linger “and breathe.” There are stacks of books to browse: art, philosophy, psychology, spirituality, poetic, literary.
Out back is a cool enclosed courtyard-cum-garden that works equally well for diners and for jazz and other musical performances. The coffee is selected for the quality of the beans and the roast. The sourdough for the club and chicken mayo sandwiches is from a hand-picked artisan baker.
Hue Café ‘Hue-Man’
The place is Lindah Majola’s vision actualized. Majola being a visionary and a mensch, as in a down-to-earth heart-on-sleeve “hue-man.” He calls the people who frequent his place “huemans” and it is permanently evolving.
To know what’s going on, whether Hue Café is open, what is on the menu for the day, be it food or event, who is performing, how Majola is feeling about life and what is happening in the kitchen, you need to check in on his personal Lindah Majola Instagram and on the Hue Café Instagram.
Culinary-wise, you will also often find out on Instagram whether this is a day his mom, Zandile Ngcobo, is prepping and plating orders and watching over the gently simmering goat stew along with sidekick cook, Ongezwe Mkhalane. Both of them were trained by Majola, wearing his chef’s hat.
The aromatic goat, which has become his signature dish, recently made it into one of SA’s top foodie magazines. It is slow-cooked with paprika, dhaniya and mother-in-law garam masala (cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, cloves, bay leaves, star anise and peppercorns).
“We use a tomato base,” says Majola. The goat is served with chakalaka (a spicy relish with chopped veggies, tomatoes and beans) and steamed bread.
Cooking Goat Stew
“He taught me how to cook the goat stew,” Ngcobo says, shy pride and love sparking her smile when she looks at her son. “But the dombolo (steamed bread) is mine, I taught him that,” she laughs. “And he cooks the mutton biryani when it’s on the menu,” she adds. Quick to give credit as due to her actor-entrepreneur-chef son.
There are sweetcorn fritters with hummus. Carrot bread with espresso butter and jam. A caprese salad. A hearty munch-into smash burger. And then the favorites from when his culinary journey began from a trailer, before he went viral on TikTok then landed his first acting role: the signature beef cheesesteak, his chicken cheesesteak and his wings, served with fries.
In brief, Majola’s journey, as he tells it, began when his grandparents took responsibility for him as a kid and he went to live with them in Cato Manor, a humble informal apartheid-era Durban suburb. He was sent to an urban Durban high school, which has enjoyed mixed fortunes over the year.
“There were a lot of troubled kids,” he says about his time there. “Drug abuse. Teen pregnancies. No extra-mural activities. Short-staffed. It’s better now, I know, than it was then. But even then, there were some wonderful people. Teachers who were patient with us. And I used to tell myself, if I could make it there, I could make it anywhere.”
Lindah Majola the Actor
There were no funds when he finished high school to send him to college. But a couple of blocks from the school was the Durban University of Technology (DUT), where initially without much sense of direction, he set his sights.
So he got a job. “At a call centre doing telesales.”
Working at the call center, a spark was ignited that would develop into a passion for acting. “I’d get into characters on my calls.” Some days he’d be an Afrikaans man. Other days he’d be a woman he called “Vanessa.”
“I enjoyed it. And a lot of the people I spoke to got into it, appreciated it…”
While working at the call center, he also developed an interest in food and catering. “I was home more at my gran’s and because I had a job, I could afford to buy ingredients. I started experimenting and developing a passion for cooking and for food.”
He decided that maybe he should study hospitality at DUT and started saving with a purpose.
With a small nest egg, Majola enrolled for the three-year national diploma in catering management. He graduated cum laude, “so they paid me back 75 percent of my fees, which translated into a bursary.”
Sandwiches for Sale
While at DUT, he helped himself financially by waking up early, making sandwiches and offering them for sale at the campus entrance. “For many students, I think it was their only option. The sandwiches would all be sold out by 8 am.”
Upon graduating and competing an internship, he got a job as a commis chef at a hotel that was part of the Hilton group in Johannesburg. “But Joburg back then, and being away from my grandmother, was too much for me. It was a dark and depressing time.”
If you Google, articles pop up where Lindah Majola talks about his challenges as a young gay man. The 30-year-old tells me he is now comfortable, at ease, with his sexuality.
But back then, he resigned after a few months, returned to Durban and got a job at an ice cream parlor on Florida Road, one of the city’s hip and happening nighttime streets.
“DUT had been extremely good for me,” he says. Knowing this inspired him. Soon as he had saved enough, he bought a small food trailer with a two-plate gas stove, a two-basin deep fryer and a flat top grill.
He decorated it with photocopied black and white pics of “all my idols and people I loved,” including apartheid struggle icons, singer Brenda Fassie, Grace Jones, and other artists… And he set up in business outside DUT, helped by his sister who was just out of high school.
Turning Lemons Into Lemonade
His small food business was just starting to do well when COVID came and DUT and everything else closed down. Doom. Gloom. For many, and initially for Lindah Majola, it was both of these.
But his life had been defined by finding opportunity in adversity. Turning life’s lemons into lemonade. He moved his food trailer to where he was living with his grandmother.
“Then came the exciting part,” he says.
Having honed his acting skills when he worked at the call center. “I started using TikTok to do satirical monologues, to tell jokes, to share stories about running my food trailer. I don’t know how or why, but it went viral.”
If you look at his Instagram, you’ll see he has close on 320,000 followers. He had more than 300,000 on TikTok when it was still running. He woke up to the idea that he could, perhaps, “translate this into the food…”
As soon as he could, given COVID’s constraints, with his gran helping him this time, he was back in business. “My grandmother and I were preparing and selling quick and easy fast and popular food and doing really well.”
Majola would be up at 6 am, at the fresh produce market at 6:30 am, back home and ready to open at 8 am. TikTok was buzzing. Orders were coming. Demand was soaring. Especially well-received were his beef cheesesteak and chicken cheesesteak, which made their way onto the menu at Hue Café. “And the wings. And the fries. People loved them.”
RELATED: The Politics of Food and the Miracle of South Africa’s Bonakude Farm
From TikTok to TV
In 2022, thanks to TikTok, he landed his first acting role. Online I read: “Lindah Majola, a popular TikTok star from Durban, made his acting debut as Langa in the Showmax original telenovela, The Wife. Majola’s transition to acting was notable, as he gained fame through his viral TikTok content during the lockdown.”
“Langa,” his role, “was a flamboyant drama queen of note,” he tells me. The role meant he had to leave his trailer and move, again, to Johannesburg. His gran and her friend, meanwhile, took over and ran the business.
The show ended after about a year and he returned to Durban. Almost immediately, he was offered another role. This time in series “Uzalo,” ongoing since 2015 on the South African public television network, SABC1 and in 2024, consistently the most watched TV show/soapie in South Africa.
“I play Mzamo, a boy from Ndlende, a made-up township. He comes to KwaMashu (a real township near Durban) to build his career in the entertainment industry.” Majola films two to three days a week, in and around Durban. In between, he is at Hue Café. Which is a story in itself.
The Hue Café Story
The time came when ongoing theft gave him little option but to shutter the trailer. “I was looking for a new home, came across this house on the internet and contacted the realtor. We are walking around inside, chatting. He is pointing to floors, ceiling, windows, explaining then — and now.”
He continues, “Homeless people had occupied it. It was dilapidated. Plants were growing from the roof, which was leaking. It truly was a disgusting mess, but I saw something in it.”
With just enough money to cover the deposit, not much of a plan and an ignorance is bliss attitude, he committed to the purchase. “I didn’t realize all the unseen expenses. All the money I had in my savings account went on lawyers, transfers, things I had never considered.”
He had the rundown house and was wondering what to do next.
“Then this man, Dada Maseko, saw me online. I didn’t know him, but he got his team to reach out. They arrived and said they were there to donate renovations, to help me set up.”
When I Google, I find an article on Joburg-based Nkululeko “Dada” Maseko, hospitality entrepreneur and owner of contemporary fusion dining destination, Brown Sugar Oceans in Umhlanga Oceans Mall, near Durban. The article tells me Maseko had decided to celebrate the first anniversary of his restaurant, Brown Sugar, by helping “enhance and renovate the establishment of actor and young entrepreneur, Lindah Majola.
“His construction team arrived,” Majola tells me. “They worked on the place. Fixed the walls, the roof, did the backyard, all the basic renovations. It was huge.” A lifesaver. “Within three months we were ready to open.”
The Kitchen Club
Lindah Majola launched with what he called The Kitchen Club in July 2024, a communal fine-dining experience. He shows me pics on his phone of a formal and beautifully laid table snaking through what is now the café interior with its velvet sofa, cool mismatched tables, chairs and benches; items of furniture donated or picked up at thrift stores. The book collection was gifted to Majola for Hue Café by a friend.
The Kitchen Club was popular. But Majola had bigger ideas. Initially, he wanted a breakfast and brunch café. But customer demand called for extended hours and menu options. “I wanted a place creatives could gather and engage. A ground for conversation. There are many spaces around the city where people come — and leave. Here, people can come, engage, read art books, listen to live jazz performances.”
He also runs Hue Café as an art gallery with art openings where he curates the exhibitions. “Instead of going to see, eat, watch and leave, the idea behind Hue is for people to stay and engage.
“I don’t know if that was my initial intention, but it’s what has evolved.” And he is happy with the ongoing evolution.
Home, Humility, Harvest
Back to home, humility and harvest, all intertwined at Lindah Majola’s Hue Café. His mom previously worked in security in Inanda where she and his dad live. Now, she is in the kitchen and loving it.
His gran and grandpa, “Gogo and Mkhulu,” do the Hue Café upkeep and maintenance. Humility comes to mind in conversation with Majola. He’s down to earth. Open. Authentic. We talked about real stuff.
“A lot of people are afraid of art spaces. They think they don’t belong,” he tells me at one point. He wants people to come, stay, hang their art, work on their laptops, listen to music, chat to the artists —to belong.
And harvest. “When it comes to putting together the menu, we have limited space and equipment so the menu is small, but there’s a feeling of being at home,” he says. He is harvesting and sharing creative talent. Giving it a home. Feeding it. Creating a café of many hues.
