Unique Double for Siba Mtongana

The prestigious Luxe Restaurant Awards presented the sought after Best Hotel Restaurant and the Excellence Award to celebrity chef Siba Mtongana at a glittering industry event held in Johannesburg last night.

The Luxe Awards are presented to ‘South Africa’s Culinary Elite’ in recognition of outstanding chefs, restaurants and culinary professionals. Winners are selected by a team of anonymous food critics as well as by the public through a digital vote. In 2022, the awards honoured Siba by naming her as their Culinary Icon.

Armed with an award under each arm, Siba thanked her hard working staff, “This is for the entire team in Cape Town that keeps us going.”

The awards come three weeks after the United Kingdom’s LUX Life Magazine named Siba The Restaurant as Cape Town’s Most Exclusive Fine Dining experience for 2023.

“The restaurant business is hard so these awards are as much for me, as my team. We couldn’t have achieved any of these awards without our amazing and talented Front of House team as well as the engine – our chefs in the back, our support team at The Siba Co Group, our landlords at The Table Bay Hotel and everyone else who believed in this crazy dream,” Mtongana said. The chef paid tribute to her fans, “our beloved guests who travel constantly across the country and from outside the country to dine with us which keeps our fires burning”.

Joanne Selby, General Manager of The Table Bay congratulated Siba on her win, “Siba is extraordinarily talented and we are extremely proud that she has chosen to partner with us for her first restaurant venture”.

Located at The Table Bay hotel in the V&A Waterfront, the restaurant serves unique dishes which combine world flavours with African flair. Mtongana, who opened her eponymous restaurant – her first venture in the hospitality industry – during the peak of the pandemic, has already made a mark locally and internationally, winning a number of local awards and being recognised at last year’s World Culinary Awards.