A Night of Laughter, Tapas & Golden Sunsets

Last Saturday, we had the absolute honour of hosting a 40th birthday pop-up dinner, and it was nothing short of magical. From the moment guests arrived, the atmosphere felt warm, joyful and beautifully intentional. Our welcome drinks consisted of a refreshing lemon & thyme mix.  It set the tone for an evening filled with laughter, games, and effortless conversation. Guests were greeted by our elegant grazing table before settling in for a tapas-style dining experience. We designed the menu around small plates to encourage sharing, exploring, and enjoying a little bit of everything. On the main table, we served:

• Aromatic rice
• Butter chicken
• Fish curry
• Roasted seasonal carrots
• Tzatziki
• Rosemary focaccia
• Pineapple salsa
• Pesto sauce
• And for dessert: a delicate pavlova topped with granadilla cream, and ofcourse  everybody had a slice of the birthday cake.

The venue itself added to the magic. As the sun set, painting the sky in soft golds and pinks, the studio transformed into the perfect backdrop for celebration. The theme was silky black, elegant pyjamas that the guest of honour provided. The 90’s music sealed the vibe. The evening felt nostalgic, familiar, and exactly right for the moment.

It was a stunning evening in a stunning space, shared with wonderful people celebrating a beautiful milestone. Nights like these remind us why we love what we do. A special thank you to our chef assistant, Cerina, for making our evening super efficient and easy. Thank you to Petronella for allowing us and trusting us to host her party. Thank you to Tebo for always capturing thee most incredible moments during a busy service. And thank God that we get to do what we love always.

Our Grade 11 chef students hosted their final exam practical of the year before they head over to the next grade. This one was a high tea with beautiful sweet and savory dainties. The chefs were amazing as always and the food was delicious. Here are a few images… feast your eyes.

A special thank you to:

1. Laager Rooibos, for the sponsorship and always investing in our vision. We truly appreciate it.

2. Reitondale High School, for always allowing theses ‘old students’ to come back and still make a mark.

3. Mrs Florette Le Roux, for being the best mentor to us and opening up the door for us to now being mentors to young chefs.

4. Mrs Marilie Loots, for welcoming us into your kitchen, we know it’s stressful but thank you for being so gracious and being a wonderful teacher.

5. Heiress… Man, we love you. Thank you for being the best photographer anyone could ever ask for, for helping us build our brand and showing up every time we need you. Thank you.

With love,
The Twins xx

With Love From The Twins x Laager Rooibos
TEA MASTERCLASS

We absolutely love what we do with Laager Rooibos, developing absolutely fantastic recipes with the tea. We gave a fun cooking class to some of our favourite chef students. We got to talk about our favourite tea and answer some of their tea questions.

We demonstrated three recipes:
1. Fizzy lemon ice tea
2. Garden salad with a Rooibos dressing
3. Pancake cake with a Mascarpone and Rooibos cream

All these recipes were developed with one Rooibos base, a Laager Rooibos syrup.

The Laager Rooibos simple syrup is one of our favourite recipes and ingredients to use. It can be stored in the fridge for weeks, used for pancakes, a sweetener for your tea, a base for your ice tea or a honey for your dressing (vinaigrette or creamy). We love this because it is so diverse and multifunctional. We think we might have created something genius here.

The recipe is simple, 2 cups of water, 8 tea bags and 1 cup of sugar. Boil until it has reduced in half. Then cool down and store in the fridge.

It’s such an honour for us to invest a bit of our time and knowledge into students who might decided to choose food as their career path.

Let’s call this a cooking class pop up shall we? Head over to our Instagram for the videos.

With love, The Twins xx

We took a trip to Chengdu, China earlier this year to visit our very good friend Kut and before we arrived we told her…”we are not here for anything else but the food ?!!!” We wanted to eat and taste everything and Kut made sure that’s what we would experience. On our very first night we had a noodle bowl ?and it was amazing??. We had all sorts of amazing food but Chengdu is known for it’s Hotpot, it’s literally hot and spicy at the same time and we knew that we had to bring this experience home with us. We made sure we made space for some hotpot stock when we came home.

Our trip to this amazing country inspired our very first pop up of this year. We wanted our friends and people around us to experience the amazing flavors.

We had the pleasure of collaborating with Grain Field Chicken and most of our dishes were chicken based, it was almost a breeze putting this menu together. Our main dish was definitely the hotpot with the chicken and the fun thing about it is, you get to cook your own food, which is great. We served a Chinese chicken noodle salad for starters and a Chinese wine pomegranate sangria. We had a flavored sticky rice, vegetable stir-fry and popcorn chicken as the sides. It was lovely and straight to the point.

As always, it’s always hard work putting the pop up dinner together, it really doesn’t get easier at all. We were lucky enough to host at a gorgeous boutique hotel in Pretoria called Birdwood Estate. With a lovely garden and views for our guest. The staff were so pleasant and they made the experience so much smoother for us, we are thankful.

We had amazing assistants who came to our rescue and helped with the order of the evening, our babies Kele, Ikanyeng, Pearl and Kamo, it was a great pleasure working with them.

And of course our friend Tebogo and her partner did our amazing artwork and ress_photography did the photography. We are very thankful for a strong girl team.

The 15th pop up!!! Can you believe that? Wow.

To many more… cheers ???

With love, The Twins xx