The Gulf Hotel has launched an Italian food festival which runs until May 8 and has flown in top Italian chef Ms Fiametta Swainston to deliver some gourmet delights.
Fiametta, who lived in Milan for nine years, has had a passion for food since childhood. She was brought up by a maternal grandmother who exposed her to the art of traditional Italian cooking. Her father is a celebrated chef too and is a partner and executive head chef at Constantia Uitsig restaurant, a renowned establishment in South Africa’s Cape Town. He has run restaurants for more than 30 years and made the restaurant business a part of Fiamma’s life. In fact she helped her mother manage the family restaurant called ‘Frank’s Trattoria Italiana’, a 120-seater typical Italian-style restaurant. She was then invited to be the executive head chef of an establishment called “Isolabella” that served Tuscan food in Cape Town. In 2000, she decided to launch own restaurant named ‘Fiamma’s’ acclaimed as one of the top restaurants in Cape Town and praised for the way it combined local, Eastern and Italian flavours. Recently, she has been a consultant for Woolworths for the tasting and upgrading all its Italian take-away foods. She is also cooking for private board dinners and politicians. Catch Chef Fiamma at the Gulf Hotel’s La Pergola Restaurant for the ‘La festa Italiana al Hotel di Golfo’ (Italian feast at the Gulf Hotel). For more information and reservation please call 1771 300 or 1771 6419/20.