WeeklySA_AdminREBOOT: New culinary and interior changes introduced by owners to generate a new vibe at renowned The Marabi Club…
By WSAM Reporter
The Marabi Club, one of Joburg’s finest live jazz bar located in Maboneng cultural precinct, recently closed for a two-week reshuffle and reopened last week with newly crafted dishes that have been added to its existing menu and a minor floor-plan revamp.
Thanks to the new appointment as executive chef of former Pot Luck Club Cape Town, Basalt and Séjour Freddie Dias to oversee the culinary offering at the club, which – and also together at Hallmark House Hotel and its rooftop restaurant. The hospitality properties are owned by Steyn Entertainment, which is set to take its brands to new heights.
Steyn Entertainment, founded in 2015 by TJ Steyn and Dale De Ruig, is a Johannesburg based multi-faceted company that owns multiple entities, including iconic music and lifestyle festivals ‘Rocking the Daisies’ and ‘In The City’ as well as record and management label ‘STAY LOW’. Its portfolio is capped by Johannesburg’s premium inner-city art hotel Hallmark House, home to the globally- renowned Marabi Jazz Club and the international award-winning Tristan Du Plessis X DJ Black Coffee-designed penthouse.
Dias – previously led a pop-up Pot Luck Club at The Marabi Club back in 2017 with De Ruig and the club’s general manager, Sicelo Mayiyane, so his return to oversee the country’s finest jazz club is something of a full-circle career journey.
The new changes at the club will provide guests with the option of seated dining or popping in for a drink and socialising, while enjoying the venue’s dazzling jazz offering. The club is a globally renowned precinct that pulls a discerning crowd. While new Dias-designed dishes have been added to the existing menu, more are to come soon.
The owners say Dias would be adding his deft touch to the menu upstairs too at Hallmark Hotel’s Thorn restaurant – a move that will usher the return soon to epic Sunday brunches on the hotel’s 15th floor Rooftop.
Dias will also be working on an array of signature dishes for the VIP sections of the Rocking the Daisies and In The City calendar events.
A return to The Marabi Club he helped form in 2017 – and the chance to work with Mayiyane and De Ruig, both of whom were high school friends – was an opportunity Dias couldn’t turn down.
“I’m as passionate about music as I am about food and the chance to bring those two together and make the offering as much about one as it is, the other, lets me be in both worlds – which I think is going to be freeing and great for creativity”.
