SA Weekend cover story: Don’t bet against Africola’s Duncan Welgemoed coming up trumps in the biggest battle of his life
From the time Duncan Welgemoed blagged his way into his first kitchen, he has made a habit of tackling adversity head-on. So don’t bet against the Africola owner/chef coming up trumps in the biggest battle of his life.
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It was in a makeshift bar in the wild lands outside Guadalupe, Mexico, that Duncan Welgemoed finally met his match. As a chef with a swashbuckling reputation and more than his share of testosterone, the supremo at Adelaide’s Africola restaurant has eaten all manner of creepy crawlies and crazy stuff that would make lesser mortals melt. “Everything but human flesh,” he says, without complete conviction.
So when Welgemoed was invited by members from one of Mexico’s notorious cartels to skol their ritual brew, he could hardly say no.
“It was rattlesnake preserved in ethanol but unfortunately it wasn’t full,” he recalls. “Only a little bit was left in the jar so the pickled snake had started to ferment. It was like the worst salad dressing …”
What followed was first a brutal hangover, then a bout of dysentery that destroyed him for close to a week.
The memory of this ill-fated trip is still painful but nothing compared to the emotion and stress of what Welgemoed describes as “a hospo apocalypse”.
As the restrictions due to COVID-19 have ramped up over the past week, he has confronted the very real possibility that Africola could go under. Casual staff have been let go and a takeaway service put in place. The government has been lobbied. But all this, he fears, might be delaying the inevitable. “This will be the end of hospitality in Australia as we know it,” he says. “The operators who can survive through this are f--king incredible.
“We’re in a better position than most restaurants … but we didn’t think restrictions would be so severe, come so quickly and be for so long. I have a massive responsibility to staff but I also have to think what I will be doing for income.”
Welgemoed urges governments to take hard action now and enforce 100 per cent isolation. He believes schools should shut and is keeping his own two boys at home.
“Let’s stop the foreplay and get straight into it,” he says.
Welgemoed has always believed in tackling challenges head-on – whether it’s a jar of rattlesnake juice or a violent French kitchen. But how did a youth from Johannesburg, South Africa, with no cooking experience, find his way into some of London’s most prestigious restaurants? And then, when he moved to the other end of the world, how did he and his little Adelaide restaurant become a favourite of rock stars, artists, counterculture icons and celebrity chefs scattered across the globe?
The more you dig, the more incredible the Welgemoed stories become. And the more the man at the centre of them becomes harder to pin down.
On one level he is big, boisterous, foul-mouthed and full of self-belief, a creative whirlwind, lightning rod for dissidents, consummate networker, habitual piss-taker and nocturnal party animal. But he is also big-hearted and supremely generous. He dotes on his two young boys, will always help a friend in need and is a convincing advocate for the state (Adelaide, he swears, is the finest city in the world).
He is strategic in business but cooks and creates best on the fly. He says he is driven to work hard by “a fear of failure” but that is difficult to see. “I want to do cool stuff,” he ventures later, and things “that are going to benefit people”.
Things like helping the Adelaide Hills businesses and communities impacted by the bushfires. He rang a few mates, took to social media (where he can also deliver an epic slap-down) and organised dinners that have raised close to $200,000.
“Duncan is an extraordinary individual and one of the most generous men, emotionally and spiritually, I’ve met in my life,” says Marco Pierre White, the trailblazing British chef and television star. “He’s a three-dimensional character. He’s intelligent, a great cook. He feeds people with his knowledge as well as his food.”
Good friend and Adelaide Hills winemaker Taras Ochota is in awe of his enthusiasm for the community.
“The thing I admire about him is how he juggles this fantastic political incorrectness with a gorgeous, warm heart that maybe many people miss,” he says. “He is himself and he’s worked out it’s one of the easiest things to do in life.”
The day I am following Welgemoed around is typically frenetic. We meet first at the Croydon studio of designer James Brown (a partner in Africola) to make final selections on the cover of his first book.
He describes it as “a reliable cookbook and an unreliable memoir” and contributors include not only chefs such as White, but also British comedian Bill Bailey, Maynard James Keenan, from US band Tool, and New York queen of counterculture Lydia Lunch.
When life returns to relative normality, the plan is for it to be launched, not with a tour of Australian bookshops and morning TV shows, but in London at Fortnum and Mason, no less, followed by New York, Los Angeles, Mexico and Europe, where the above acquaintances and others will be involved.
From Croydon, we head into Africola, which is closed during the middle of the day and strangely quiet given the hullabaloo that inevitably accompanies dinner service. Supplies collected and Welgemoed’s boys (who have a day off school) on board, we head to the Basket Range home of Ochota.
Production for his label Ochota Barrels is in full swing and the driveway is lined with giant tubs of grapes ready to crush. Welgemoed is preparing lunch for the vintage workers to help out his mate. In typical style, he has roped in help, including the two chefs from the Summertown Aristologist up the road and a Dutchman in town for the Fringe.
Meanwhile, he is also on the phone to Africola, sorting a booking for 11 cast and crew from a freak show he’d seen earlier in the week. They’ll pay for drinks but the meal is free. It’s this attitude that has helped him form a formidable contact list.
“My black book is vast,” Welgemoed says. “In almost every city on the planet I have fixers and friends, from all the subcultures of life, whether it is art, music, cooking, sex workers …
“I’m a generous person and have a no bullshit attitude. I’m always hospitality. I’m not trying to impress anyone. I am who I am.
“I used to play drums but I’ll never be a world-class drummer. But I can with what I do be on the same level … they can appreciate me creatively. You are not fanboying. It’s not a one-sided exchange. You can both feed off each other.
“That’s the thing with Africola – it’s about a lifestyle, not just food. It can be anything. And music is intrinsic to that.”
Don’t, however, take the next step and call him a rock star chef. He quotes Violent Femmes bass player Brian Ritchie, another mate: “Chefs aren’t rock stars; rock stars are rock stars.”
Welgemoed was raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, as an only child. His mother, Gail, worked as an interior designer. His father, Peter, was an ex-bikie and a special forces soldier before leaving the army and becoming a chef.
He was a pillar of the community, Welgemoed says, but trouble still tended to find him. “When you have that reputation (from his background) younger guys want to make a name for themselves. My dad died of a heart attack 10 years ago … but he never lost a fight.”
One night, when Welgemoed was 12, his father was shot and stabbed while drinking in a bar. It prompted the family to move to a rural setting near the Mozambique border, as far away from the violent city as they could get.
At age 17, Welgemoed headed to London with a couple of mates and no particular plans. Fresh off the plane, they went looking for a drink and ended up in a Soho strip club where they were mugged and Welgemoed lost his wallet and all his money.
Desperate for work, he saw an ad for a chef and, despite having no experience, blagged his way into the job. What he didn’t know was that the kitchen at La Bouchee was all French and “as violent as it gets”. Getting punched in the mouth or thrown down the stairs for a small misdemeanour was not uncommon.
His time there did not end well. While packing his section away, his tray snagged a large stick blender and tipped 50 litres of bouillabaisse soup and mulch all over the carpeted floor an hour before dinner service. “So I bolted because I was going to get sacked,” he recalls. “I jumped out the basement window. I didn’t pick up my pay cheque.”
Still, Welgemoed’s path was set, and he next headed out of London to The Goose in Oxfordshire. He was only 18, the head chef was 23, but after six months they had won a coveted Michelin star.
Next came stints with some of Britain’s restaurant royalty, including Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Heston Blumenthal (Fat Duck) and Gordon Ramsay. The “cooking by numbers” reality of a Michelin star kitchen wasn’t for him but he really found a kindred spirit at the game-loving country inn, The Pot Kiln. “There were no suppliers … we had to hunt and fish for everything, every day,” he says. “If you didn’t come back with a deer in the morning, you would do drive-bys and shoot someone’s sheep.
“And the parties were crazy. There were exotic dancers and hospitality groups hanging out. And then you had to get up the next morning with a rifle and stalk a deer.”
Around this time, however, he had also met and fallen for a South Australian girl named Catherine. The couple married, she became pregnant and they decided they did not want to raise a child alone in England. “Going back to Johannesburg was not an option, so Adelaide was it,” Welgemoed explains.
His first job here was with the Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society where he learnt to build a kitchen from scratch and put on functions for 2500 people. He also mixed with politicians and corporate heavyweights with whom he still stays in touch. He moved to tiny CBD restaurant Bistro Dom where he slowly evolved the cooking from familiar French to more adventurous territory. The restaurant became a clubhouse for alternative thinkers, particularly the natural winemakers from the Adelaide Hills.
That reputation and crowd moved with him to Africola in the East End, where the narrative initially concentrated on the backyard “brai” (barbecue) and shanty bars of his hometown. A second incarnation, including change in decor, has been exploring the food of the continent’s north, with more aromatic spices and more vegetables.
As head chef at Africola, Imogen “Mo” Czulowski has seen how Welgemoed excels under pressure.
“He is the king of ‘on the fly’,” she says. “He is very creative on the spot, which is really inspiring as a chef. We have a lot of fun through service. It is showtime between 6 and 10 o’clock and we put on a performance.”
Even with the rocky months ahead for Africola, Czulowski is confident they will be OK.
“Duncan wants to help and likes to create something good out of a shit situation. He is good at changing things up and putting a positive spin on stuff and lifting staff morale,” she says.
White says that Welgemoed is one of the rare chefs who cook what they want to eat.
“He accepts and respects that mother nature is the true artist and he is the cook,” White says. “When he cooks something it looks like it is meant to be and not something else.”
No doubt if he had stayed in Europe, Welgemoed could have collected a constellation of Michelin stars, but he has no regrets.
As anyone who has followed his social media work will know, he abhors the excessive hype and cynicism that can be attached to the industry.
The bloggers demanding a free meal, for instance, and the empty gesturing and “smoke and mirrors” of a traditional awards ceremony.
His latest venture is to establish a publishing company that will release a free magazine and is establishing its own national award system for food and drinks.
Meanwhile, he is very happy to base himself in what he describes as “the best city on the planet”.
“I’m really proud of what we do and am passionate about the state of South Australia,” he says. “We have the small-town closeness but our products are world class. People here are more discerning and well-travelled, and a lot less impressed by hype and bullshit.
“This is my life. I invest my heart and soul into SA. I’ll fight for this community every day. I’ll never leave SA, even in this apocalypse.
“We are still alive. The hospitality industry isn’t dead yet.”
Africola at Home is open for takeaway from 5pm-9pm, Tues-Sat. Call 8223 3885 to order and pick up or delivery through UberEats.