The Food Dude
May 15, 2015
Brakpan’s Princess Polla
January 23, 2017
Ignore the decor and savour the sensational food.
I ONCE cooked with Watchara Sirvanjanakul, aka Roger, in a sweaty cubbyhole at his restaurant in Avonmore Centre in Morningside. The experience conjured up images of The Year of Living Dangerously and I felt, fleetingly, like Mel Gibson. Only, whereas old drop-dead gorgeous Mel struggled to find his feet in the political turmoil of Jakarta, I grappled with the heat and Roger’s accent. I foolishly clutched a wok, as if to make myself useful, and Watchara whirled around with alarming Asian efficiency. Stop what you are doing, get down to Green Mango.
Greg Ardé
Greg Ardé is a journalist based in Durban, South Africa. He has written three books and currently edits a magazine.
In the course of his 30-year career Greg has been involved with a number of media, including newspapers, radio and television. He is the former bureau chief of the Sunday Times in Durban and editor of a monthly magazine which appeared in that newspaper.
He was previously deputy editor of the Sunday Tribune, property editor of the same publication and business editor of The Mercury.
He was political reporter on the Daily News and worked for the South African Press Association in the run-up to South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994. In that time he covered political violence extensively. Greg has a national diploma in journalism from the erstwhile Technikon Natal.
As part of this, he served a year’s internship at the Daily Dispatch in East London and later ran the Dispatch's Umtata bureau, close to the birthplace of Nelson Mandela. He is deeply committed to issues of justice, accountability and development and wrote a weekly column for 15 years.
Greg has a keen interest in the evolution of cities and in 2013 and 2014, contributed to the Resilient Cities series, an initiative sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation.
Greg’s passion for politics, cities and development nurtured a curiosity in business and entrepreneurs and he has run three publications in that vein.
In the course of his career, Greg has also facilitated a number of roundtable talks aimed at improving education, economic development and job creation in Durban, the city he calls home.
