The Blackanese Sushi And Wine Bar Brings The Fusion Of Japanese Cuisine With African Flavour!
The Blackanese Sushi And Wine Bar Brings The Fusion Of Japanese Cuisine With African Flavour! The restaurant is situated in the trendy new Maboneng Precinct, the Blackanese Sushi and Wine Bar fuses African flavour with Japanese cuisine. Sushi can be enjoyed throughout the week and on Saturdays and Sundays guests can relax whilst they prepare tasty prawns on the braai. The restaurant also offers a catering service and runs regular sushi classes.
The restaurant was founded by Vusi Kunene. Through his tenacity he found a way into the service industry by being a waiter in restaurants and working for events companies, during which time he discovered he had a real love, and talent, for serving people “I fell in love with food but I also fell in love with serving people, and that love and passion just hasn’t stopped.” Kunene told Food24.
According to Food24, after training as a sushi chef he came to Johannesburg and started up a mobile sushi bar, working at food markets and at events, he says it could be pretty comical at times: ‘I was the only black guy in the markets and, of all things; I was the one selling sushi’. He was working at a function when someone asked him where in Japan he was from, he simply answered ‘I’m not Japanese, I’m Blackanese’ and, after laughter had subsided, the name stuck.
He wanted to create a sushi bar that would inspire people who usually turn their noses up at raw fish to gravitate towards trying it and he did this through a cleverly designed menu. I’d go as far as to call it ‘afrocentric’ in its sushi style.
“So I did a fusion of the two cultures, Japanese with an African twist. But I had to make sure that the product very much communicates the Japanese culture, for example how the rice is prepared, and how the cuisine should be presented to customers. I came across challenges where I had to prove myself all the time and it really took a lot to educate and convince people.” Kunene told SME South Africa.
