5 minutes with Sechaba G

I love The Stack. My husband, Sakekile Gqeba, found it on our way to a dinner reservation somewhere else and I remember thinking, I love this place! Now we often come to the bar for a sundowner, and every time we have friends from Joburg we bring them here. The cocktails are the best! I also love the pork belly.

I fell in love with food when I met Sakekile. He does his research about restaurants – he really makes it into an affair and I associate food with when we met, when we first started dating, and when we got engaged.

I believe in a good date night once a month – if we can do it twice a month, that’s perfect. We’ve always loved trying different spots and I feel like once people have kids they forget those kinds of things. A date night can just be two hours. And it doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive. We’ve always prioritised it, and I think it’s the reason why our marriage is so much fun.

We started the blog because people started sending me questions. “You always go to such nice places. Where can we go?” or “Hey, I’m in Cape Town, where should I eat?” At that stage, I was just doing Insta stories, and posting on social media, but then I thought, hubby and I do this, let’s share it with everybody else. So now instead of people messaging me they can go to the link.

My husband is the chef in the family. I used to be embarrassed about it, but he’s really good. I’ve tried – and now that I’m not on radio any more I’ve considered taking classes. But he’s a natural. If we’re out shopping, he steers towards the homeware department and starts looking at baking equipment. I make a mean breakfast on weekend mornings, though. I go all out – pancakes, bangers, bacon, eggs – the whole thing.

I can never say no to sweet treats: chocolate cake, red velvet cake – don’t show me a cupcake! I love a milk tart; a sticky toffee pudding. I had to stop because I’d have sweet treats every evening and I thought “you’re turning 30, so this is not going to work”.

As a child, I loved my grandmother’s steamed bread. It was – and still is – amazing. You eat it with
a little butter and the butter just melts. You can have it with soup or with stew.

It’s been really amazing working on Motswako for SABC2. I’ve wanted to do television for the longest time – the past eight to ten years. Motswako has been around for 19 seasons. I used to watch it as a kid with my grandmother, so it’s really cool to be working on it. I’m interviewing some big names – I’ve just interviewed the Banyana Banyana coach, Desiree Ellis. Meeting the second female president in Africa, Joyce Banda of Malawi, touched me. And I was honoured to meet singer Simphiwe Dana.

There’s a big difference between television and radio. Radio is very immediate – you’re in your trackpants, with a bun, or a beanie, you prep, and if in two seconds you feel like the direction of the show needs to change, it can change. With television there’s a lot more planning, a lot more structure.

Follow @Sechaba_G on Twitter and @sechabag on Instagram.