Pop-Up Restaurant: Great Makers

Taste contributing food editor Khanya Mzongwana has brought her collab-driven pop-up feasts to Cape Town. First up? Sharing platters of jerk chicken, braaied lamb and creative inspo in the east city

- Khanya Mzongwana

Khanya Mzongwana likes to feed people. A lot. So much, in fact, that she created an alter-ego of sorts on Instagram, @palmoliveza_, to push herself out of her comfort zone and share her love for cooking with others at a series of pop-up events.

Palm-Olive is currently a one-person band and Khanya sees it as a space in which she can express herself through food by hosting events with like-minded people. For this, her first pop-up in Cape Town, Khanya collaborated with Julie Nxadi and Loyiso Qoboshiyana of The MuthaShip Landing, a group that encourages collaboration between artists in their creative spheres of choice.

“The Mutha-Ship is an experiment in audacity,” says Julie. “As Black makers we are particularly aware of the pressure on artists (Black women especially) to always be presentable and obedient in their disciplines. Whether it’s communicated through moving or still images, music, literature, storied objects or, in this case, food, sometimes all an idea needs is room to breathe. We want to be that room.”

Julie and Khanya met at the inaugural Food XX event in Cape Town in 2018. “We clicked immediately and I knew we’d work together one day,” Khanya says. “I started Palm-Olive on my own, but things always work out better when they’re collaborative.”