Zimbabwean Chef Kudakwashe Makoni

Photo credit: Kudakwashe Makoni

Zimbabwean chef Kudakwashe Makoni set out to show the simplicity the African cuisine based on the teachings of his grandmother while growing up.

“I am going to be very honest, because I grew up Gen Z, Millenial and we grew up at a period when Zimbabwean cuisine was basically shunned upon. Like I said, this is when we still had the influence of the British rule that had just passed. So we [Chef Kuda and his friends] grew up at a time where local Zimbabwean food was not, can I call it, trendy; was not your common food. And just like everything Zimbabwean, everything cultural to us, we really looked away from it,” he says in the episode.

As they say, you don’t know what you have till it’s gone. The saying holds true for Kuda after moving to the U.S. and settling in Texas. Attracted the perceived glamour of America , especially the flashing lights of Hollywood, the future chef had everything but food on his mind, until he was at a crossroads in life.

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Championing African Cuisine in Africa and Abroad

“It was just a thing that Kuda loves cooking,” he says, recalling it was just something he naturally did without much effort or thought. However, eleven years ago, things took a turn when, as he says “life was lifing.” Taking us back, he says, “I wasn’t yet ready to make those hard life decisions. But the funny thing about life is that life just has a weird way of twisting everything around so one day it was like boom in my face and like “Okay you know what, if this is the path you want to go, life said I will show you this is how life really is. And from that moment I realized that not only is my passion culinary arts, but my calling, my gifts, life everything about who I am evolves around food.”

Chef Kuda left the states and returned to Zimbabwe after culinary school to be immersed in the African cuisine of his homeland. Soon, his moniker, The Black Chef was born.

Be sure to catch the full episode for his full journey and then follow and connect on this website, Facebook and Instagram.