The South African’s dishes involve a good combination of taste, skills and dedication. His training in French cuisine has allowed him to showcase his full talent and gain recognition in the culinary industry.
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00:00 The journey of this award-winning culinary high-flyer is as interesting as the dishes
00:07 he cooks up.
00:08 How did chef Moses Molloy grow to become one of South Africa's most promising chefs?
00:15 There's this adrenaline rush that you get when we are pumping food out and everyone's
00:20 like energy is all up.
00:21 So I don't think there's many places that you can get that type of adrenaline rush.
00:27 And it's just an amazing space once the kitchen is pumping and we're pushing food out.
00:32 I love it.
00:33 I love it.
00:34 I don't want it to ever end, you know?
00:36 Trained in French cuisine and having dabbled in a number of global gastronomies, chef Moses
00:41 Molloy is now serving up a Mexican-Peruvian inspired menu.
00:47 He's the head chef here at one of Johannesburg's top food destinations, Zoo Restaurant.
00:54 So I studied French cuisine primarily because it's the foundation of many cuisines in the
00:58 world and a lot of my chefs that inspired me have been trained through the French cuisine.
01:05 Different continents, we take from the French cuisine, you know?
01:08 It's a mother of it all.
01:11 When I came to Johannesburg, we sat down with the owners and we chose a specific cuisine.
01:18 Celebrity chef and restaurateur David Higgs has added Zoo to his impressive restaurant
01:24 portfolio.
01:25 One of the first things we thought about was going a little bit Asian because that seems
01:32 to be the trend nowadays.
01:33 Anything Asian, anything sushi works.
01:36 But then what happened was that every second restaurant was now Asian inspired and we just
01:40 thought let's take a different angle.
01:43 And something that's been done at a higher level is the whole Mexican sort of Peruvian
01:48 vibe.
01:49 There's a lot of it going on but a lot of it is infused with different menus.
01:54 So we thought we'd take a direct angle with this.
01:56 And it really is the flavors of what people in South Africa enjoy.
01:59 It's slightly spicy, there's beautiful sweetness that comes through from fruit and vegetables
02:04 and then obviously the whole raw fish which again takes from that Asian angle.
02:10 But remember that Peruvian food is largely inspired and massively inspired by Japan because
02:16 they cross the waters from each other.
02:18 So there is similarities.
02:23 Despite the influence from other global cuisines, the South African element still shines through.
02:31 Mexican tacos, you know.
02:32 We use that, we use our local produce here.
02:36 We make a nice salsa and we take our local lamb here and we put it together with a beautiful
02:40 herb guacamole.
02:41 You know what I mean?
02:42 The fusion of that.
02:43 But the lamb itself, we cook it in a South African way.
02:47 And taking the actual taco and the Mexican way of making tacos, the Morita salsas and
02:51 all that, we put it together to come up with some of our dishes or many of our dishes.
02:58 A lot of people think we are but we're not fine dining.
03:01 Fine dining is just the, look, just the finer details in a lot of stuff, you know.
03:05 My foundation and background is on fine dining.
03:07 So I do try to do certain things in a finer way.
03:11 So maybe that's where people have this perception that we are fine dining.
03:17 We're meant to be fine dining if there's such, you know what I mean?
03:22 Because there's certain elements of our dishes that are like on the finer edge of things
03:25 and then the others are like, look at the dishes, we wouldn't say it's a fine dining
03:28 plate, you know.
03:29 It's quite rustic and not too neat.
03:36 Cooking in the restaurant kitchen is busy work.
03:38 Chef Moses has taken to cycling for fitness and to boost creativity.
03:45 When I'm riding my bike, I can think clearly and thoroughly about certain dishes and recipes
03:51 and how we can improve the restaurant.
03:54 Also like the amount of steps that we get to into the kitchen, it's quite a lot.
03:59 So with being fit and healthy, you just can literally be easy, you know, in such a way
04:05 that you're not that tired like many of the other guys that are slightly not fit.
04:13 The award-winning chef attributes his love for cooking to his grandmother.
04:19 My grandmother taught me a lot of tricks that still today that I use.
04:23 I mean, I won a competition in the United States with the method of cooking the dombole,
04:28 which is also known as dumplings/steamed bread in a plastic, you know, you use a shop-bought
04:34 plastic bag.
04:35 So the people there were like shocked as to see me using a shopping bag to steam the bread
04:41 in that.
04:42 Chef Moses has long since traded in the plastic bag for a chef's knife and knows exactly how
04:48 to prepare a cutting-edge menu.
04:52 One day I have dreams and aspirations to open my own restaurant where I can dive into like
04:57 different corners of South Africa.
04:59 I feel like as a country, we have so much more to offer and I want to dive into that.
05:05 This is where home is.
05:06 South Africa has so much more.
05:08 With grand plans ahead, Chef Moses Molloy is definitely one to follow.
05:14 (upbeat music)