By Matšeliso Phulane
Fantastic news to fans of fine dining experience! Your second annual Chef’s Table is back again this year.
Organised by Vester’s Delight, the event will take place on March 2 at Darham Link Maseru, at 5pm.
Chef’s Table is an exclusive dining experience which allows chefs to show off their culinary skills to guests, and it normally accommodates limited seating in the venue.
The aim of the event is to spread knowledge about fine dining and food presentation with different course meals.
Vester’s Delights was established in 2020 and it provides chef services such as baking, catering and dining.
In an interview with theReporter this week, Vester’s Delight owner and the organiser of Chef’s Table, Thabo Sylvester Ntoanyane (famously known as Chef Sylvester) said the event is all about dining, and being able to approach the way of preparing food.
“This is a four-course dining experience named the Chef’s Table which is now going to be our annual event from now onwards.
“This year we will be providing four dishes, namely, bread course, soup course, in between we will have pallet cleanser, then our main course and dessert.
“We have a group of performers again this year, our big partner Mountain Kingdom Melodies, an orchestra group,” he said.
Chef Sylvester said hosting such event is an inspiration he got way back when he was a student where, they had a similar event as their final examination which was a TV series named ‘Chefs Table on Netflix’
He indicated that this is not the first time he is hosting events since he once had two others before named The ‘Dinning experience’, ‘Spring brunch’ followed by the ‘Chef’s table’ which started last year.
Chef Sylvester said last year’s event was a success even though it started late due to late arrivals. Besides that, another challenge was people who wanted to buy tickets at the eleventh hour.
“We have to host a small number of guests so that people can have the best experience and we give them more of what they would like to see,” the chef observed.
Chef Sylvester mentioned that what he also learned from last year’s event was that a lot of people are not yet into fine dining experiences.
He, however, said he is satisfied that people are learning and most of the time he sees many faces and he is hoping to see even more this year.
Chef Sylvester added that the main challenge with hosting the event is lack of indoor venues, forcing them to host them outdoors. Sometimes, weather conditions change thereby causing a lot of inconvenience.
He further noted that outsourcing of ingredients is also a challenge because some of the local retail shops do not have them hence the need to buy them outside the country.
Despite all those challenges, Chef Sylvester hopes to provide good, quality food, and a lot of entertainment for people to have fun.
Guests should expect a fantastic time and a good dining experience they will never forget, he promised.
“The inspiration is all about having fun, trying different types of food, playing around with our pallets when it comes to our dishes, flavours and the food presentation.
“The event also has limited seating so that we can give our guests a lifetime experience. All I can say is that get yourself a ticket so you can come and have a great moment,” he concluded.
Chef Sylvester holds a City and Guilds certificate in food preparation and cooking. He also has diploma in patisserie certificate obtained from Capsicum Culinary Studios in Cape Town, South Africa.
The dress code for this year’s event is smart casual.
