Johannesburg - On the surface, Justin Bonello landed his bum in the butter, selling his laid-back travel-cum-cooking show featuring a few of his close mates – and then some.
But while it’s not been an easy ride, the Cooked series and Ultimate Braai Master (now in its second season) have traded on his effortless style – even in the most trying settings.
Film has always been home for him. “My mom is in the industry. Before I left school I was working on commercials and it got to the point where I hated it.
“I was carrying 40kg of weights across a beach for a washing powder advert and I decided this was selling the unwanted to the unwashed. There’s nothing in it for me,” he explains on a recent trip to Joburg promoting the Ultimate Braai Master: Roads Less Travelled cookbook, featuring Bonello with chefs Bertus Basson and Marthinus Ferreira, based on the Ultimate Braai Master currently airing on SABC3.
A radical career change followed: IT. “I studied it and after spending two years in a dark hole I decided it was not for me. Then I got into the clothing industry – it bombed. At the time, you go to a dark place, but in retrospect it had to happen to me.
“The only place I had to go was back to the film industry.
“I started catering on sets and when I was back in that space, I met up with a bunch of people who I had worked with 15 years before.
“When I came up with the idea for Cooked it took me a year to edit the whole thing. I sent it to the SABC, the BBC, the whole lot. The BBC came back and said: ‘If you produce a show, we’ll buy it’.
Having lost his clothing business, money was tight: “I had to borrow money from my mom. She’s been incredibly supportive over the years.
“We’ve shot 22 shows now – we’ve been on SABC, BBC, Discovery, the Travel Channel, everywhere. We’re watched by 100 million people around the world. The series has been translated into 22 languages.
“I get love letters from South Africans all over the world telling me I’ve made them homesick.
“It has been a long road. And it’s turned into a big operation.
“I now employ about 30 of my close friends.”
Surely Cooked in Africa’s shows, being viewed all over the world by millions of people, would have brought some international prestige to South African tourism and marketing?
“We have such an insular approach to marketing ourselves. Howard Booysen and I tried to promote the wine industry in a TV series – Exploring the Vine, looking at green wine, women in wine, the oldest vines in the country, the longest wine route in the world. That show almost put me out of business.
“I really believed the wine industry would get behind me, but it’s too fragmented and they didn’t. Once I was into it, I had to finish it. I was stressing but in December my distributor called me to say we’ve just been sold to National Geographic.
“The local guys didn’t understand you’re not just selling wine – everyone’s doing that – you have to sell a lifestyle.
“We have approached SA Tourism and really hope that we can take this idea forward together in the future.
Cooked in Africa Productions and Ultimate Braai Master are not his only ventures, as Justin is now working on developing a personal mission: urban gardening.
“We have a complete disconnect with the way our food is produced. We live in urban environments and increasingly as we move into these spaces, we lose respect for everything – which has to happen in order to keep us in those spaces. Sheryl Ozinsky’s City Farms project off Upper Orange Street in Oranjezicht is inspirational.
“It’s the country’s oldest urban farm. They got it right to get a piece of ground from City Parks, which is great because it sets a precedent for urban farms; it allows us to take back our cities.”
Much like the allotments in the UK? “It’s much bigger than that because it will change the way we operate in that urban environment and in our neighbourhoods.
“But I don’t want to run a chapter in every neighbourhood, I just want to run a chapter in my neighbourhood. Studies have shown, the minute you start an urban gardening project, crime drops and community engagement improves.
“That 80-year-old granny who was barricading herself into her flat suddenly has a reason to leave home and speak to people in her environment.”
What of the judges on Ultimate Braai Master? Was it not a case of too many cooks spoiling the show?
Bonello laughs: “I love Bertus and Marthinus, but they’re very different people and chefs. Bertus thinks nothing of pulling out Aunty Hetta’s (his mother’s) apple pie recipe while Marthinus is more precise, on the alchemy side.
“Right now (with a newborn baby in the house and a busy schedule), my style is from greenhouse to my plate in under 15 minutes.”
And braaing is a cherished social custom. “For me, when I light a fire and I’ve got my friends around me, life is good. It’s this kuier that you have and you feel good about yourself.
“We can do a tjop, wors, a verlepte salad, but we can do even better than that.”
For the next season, Bertus, who owns Overture restaurant on the Hidden Valley wine estate outside Stellenbosch, and Marthinus, of DW Eleven-13 and The Grazing Room in Dunkeld West in Joburg, are staying on as judges, but a third judge, a woman, will be joining them.
“We’re still working out the details.”
Friendship, though, is what it’s about. In his Cooked series, Justin’s mates tagged along for the ride. In The Ultimate Braai Master, contestants become friends for life on the road.
“You have people who would never normally hang out with each other and they’ve become friends. It’s the trip of a lifetime – the longer you hold out, the longer you travel the length and breadth of the country.
“It’s an all-expenses-paid trip. You can’t help yourself becoming friends with people.” - Saturday Star
* Catch Justin Bonello on The Ultimate Braai Master Season 2 on Wednesdays on SABC3 at 8.30pm.