Member Interview | Summerhill Guest Estate

I have spent the week here in KZN. The Ocean Innovation Africa conference kept me largely indoors and in meetings. I didn’t even go to the beach. But between sessions I found myself drawn back to this place, to its particular quality of stillness, its unhurried warmth. On Wednesday evening, two days after Johannes and his wife Johanna collected their latest Eat Out Awards in Cape Town — Chef of the Year and the Rural Green Star, both for the second consecutive year — I had dinner at The LivingRoom, the fine dining restaurant that occupies the heart of Summerhill. A colleague joined me to celebrate a successful conference. It became a celebration of KZN cuisine instead.

Now, sitting across from Johannes and Johanna Richter for what turns out to be their first interview since those wins, I find myself thinking that the restaurant makes complete sense as an extension of this house, their family. There is no smoke. No dry ice. No theatre. Just very (very!) good food, very good wine, and people who seem genuinely glad you came.

Congratulations are in order — again. Chef of the Year for the second consecutive year, the Rural Green Star for the second consecutive year. And this on top of the three-star Eat Out rating, which puts The LivingRoom in the top tier of restaurants in the country. How do you make sense of that?

Johannes leans back and smiles, but there’s no false modesty in what follows. “We banked on the local,” he says. “Even though it wasn’t trending — everyone was looking east or west, getting inspiration from abroad — we said we were going to bank on Durban, on local produce, on local heritage.” He pauses. “We didn’t quite know how daunting that was going to be. Especially not being in Stellenbosch or Cape Town. We were outliers. But ten years later, a lot of hard work has paid off.”

Johanna is quick to add what Johannes won’t say about himself. “And I think it also helps that when you come in here, you feel comfortable, at home. When we were working overseas, in restaurants that were very often intimidating — you don’t know which fork to take, the person standing next to you is a stranger — we always said we never wanted to create that intimidating feeling. We wanted guests and staff to feel like part of the family.”

Chef of the Year is an individual award, but Johannes is reluctant to accept it on those terms. “It only makes sense if the team is buying in and everyone shares the vision,” he says. “Everyone here is very proud to be here, very happy to be here. The good feelings dominate — and that’s something guests can sense. People chose to be here. You can feel it in the food.”

“We never wanted to create that intimidating feeling. We wanted guests and staff to feel like part of the family.”

— Johanna Richter

The family feeling is not incidental. It is, in a very literal sense, the origin of the place. Summerhill Guest Estate has been here for 29 years, built and run by Christine Richter, Johannes’ mother. The LivingRoom grew out of what was originally the dining space for house guests. Musicians stayed here. Artists passed through. A friend once wrote that previous guests had left something of themselves in the space. “That’s a beautiful thing,” Johannes says quietly, “because you realise that people don’t just come and go.”

When Johannes and Johanna returned to Summerhill — having met in Berlin, having built careers in professional kitchens in Europe — they eased, as Johannes puts it, into the family business. But they also elevated it. “The establishment as it is now,” Johanna says, “is the product of the hard work Christine put in over almost three decades, and then the years where The LivingRoom and Summerhill worked together — reinvesting, building slowly, creating spaces like this.” She glances around the lounge, taking it in as if seeing it anew. “There’s something to be said for organic growth.”

You’re in the hills outside Durban — not exactly the epicentre of South African fine dining. Has that ever felt like a disadvantage?

“It used to,” Johannes says. “Before the awards started coming, Durban simply wasn’t known for fine dining. And that never made any sense to me.” He leans forward. “From tropical coastline to temperate mountain slopes in under an hour. I don’t think that exists anywhere else in the world. We have the subtropical coast with its warm Indian Ocean currents, and then the Drakensberg behind us — more European climates, artichokes, potatoes, incredible livestock. It just needs someone to tell the story.”

That story is told at The LivingRoom through the food itself — and increasingly through the seasonal produce letters that greet guests on arrival, a quiet but deliberate act of education. “When someone arrives,” Johannes says, “they can see that nature is the driving force. It’s not hip and trendy marketing. It has substance.”

“From tropical coastline to temperate mountain slopes in under an hour. I don’t think that exists anywhere else in the world.”

— Johannes Richter

What’s on the menu right now — what ingredients are exciting you most?

Johannes barely pauses. “Sorghum,” he says. “From a grain point of view, it’s my number one at the moment.” He explains that sorghum has cooling mineral properties — similar in effect to mint — which is why it has been rooted in African culinary tradition for centuries, long before corn became dominant. “It’s a story that deserves to be told on a plate.” He is also deep in a pelargonium phase — an indigenous herb that comes in many varieties, with a strikingly broad aromatic palette. “We used to use it as a garnish, like an edible flower. Now we’re working with it much more extensively. It’s a remarkably versatile plant.” And, of course, local poultry, which features prominently on the menu at the moment and which he describes simply as “amazing.”

Much of the fresh produce comes from an organic farm in the KZN midlands — a woman-run operation where crops are hand-pollinated and almost 100 varieties of tomatoes grow side by side. “Our children come with us when we visit,” Johanna says. “For them, walking through a field of a hundred tomato varieties and picking each one off the vine to taste it — that’s just normal. And I think that’s a gift.” She means it. There is nothing performative about the way she says it.

The sourcing philosophy extends to a commitment that is, by fine dining standards, almost radical. The LivingRoom works exclusively with what Johannes calls category one ingredients. “A category one is a raw tomato,” he explains. “Category two is passata. Category three is a pasta sauce. Category four is ketchup. We are completely on category one — across the board.” The only exceptions: butter, cheese, yogurt, and seed oil.

That same insistence on depth over convenience extends to how they run their kitchen. The menu changes seasonally, keeping the team alert and curious. “If you cook the same dishes every day, announce the same menu every day — where does the curiosity go?” Johannes asks. Johanna picks up the thought without missing a beat. “People come here and they grow — as cooks, as humans. After three months you can see it. That, for me, is as satisfying as any award.”

“People come here and they grow — as cooks, as humans. That, for me, is as satisfying as any award.”

— Johanna Richter

And then there’s the ocean…

Johannes nods, almost before the question is finished. About five years ago, The LivingRoom removed all wild-caught ocean produce from its menu. For a restaurant within reach of the warm Indian Ocean, it was an unusual, even counterintuitive decision at first glance. Some in the industry raised eyebrows. “People said, well, it’s easy for you,” Johannes says. There is a brief silence. “It’s not easy. We made a decision, and we have to be accountable for it.” Another pause. “We all theoretically know the oceans are empty.”

It is the kind of sentence that lands differently, resonates more deeply, when you’ve spent a week at an impact and sustainability conference called Ocean Innovation Africa. It is also the kind of sentence that explains, more than any awards citation could, why The LivingRoom keeps winning.

“We all theoretically know the oceans are empty.”

— Johannes Richter

Running a restaurant together, running a guesthouse together, raising a family together — how do you make that work?

“You need to share the same goals, the same ideals,” Johanna says. “That makes the journey easier. People always ask whether we argue, whether there are points where we just can’t find common ground. But we share this ambition — we want to create something special. When you have that, even the difficult moments have a direction.”

Johannes is more candid about the economics. “In the last eight years, we put in a lot more than we got out. We saw it as an investment.” The toughest years, he says, were during COVID — not just the financial strain, but the loss of the reciprocal energy that hospitality runs on. “You usually get so much back from your guests, from the interactions here. During COVID that was just gone. And that’s when you realise why hospitality matters to the people drawn to it.”

That ethos of investment extends to the people who work with them. Long-serving team members will not simply be retained — they will be brought forward. “At a certain point,” Johannes says, “you want to give people the opportunity to flourish on their own. Rather than have someone who can never step into the lead role, never make their own decisions — you nurture them, grow them, and then you bring them along on your own next chapter.” It is, he says, about keeping the knowledge, the ethos, the relationships with producers — all of it built painstakingly over a decade — within the family. In the broadest sense of that word.

There’s a German thread running through all of this — Johannes grew up here, went to the Deutsche Schule Durban, met Johanna in Berlin. Their children now attend the German school too. Is that a conscious choice — keeping that connection alive?

“It’s just who we are,” Johanna says simply. “Raclette for Christmas, straw star ornaments on the tree, German as a family language — these things are part of us.” Johannes smiles. “But KZN is home. It has been for a long time.” He glances at the photographs on the wall. “There’s a picture of me in this room as a child. Now my children are in this room. That’s not something you can manufacture.”

The German heritage surfaces in unexpected places — including, occasionally, on the menu. A duck with wood-fired accompaniments. Echoes of the European culinary tradition they both trained in, quietly translated into the subtropical landscape of KwaZulu-Natal. “You find a way to bring it all together,” Johannes says. “That’s part of the story too.”

Finally — what comes next?

They exchange a look. “Too many plans,” Johannes says, and laughs. “We’re at a point where we need to find the right way forward.” What he will say is this: The LivingRoom will always be, in his words, “the fine dining mothership — where the development, the research, the training happens.” From that foundation, other things will branch off. More relaxed, more accessible, different price points. “Same producers, same ethics, same values,” Johanna adds. “Just expressed in a different way.”

It sounds, in the best possible sense, like a family expanding.

· · ·

Outside, the late afternoon light has shifted. The breeze has picked up. A thunderstorm is probably rolling in. Johannes was right — this is a beautiful time of year to be in KwaZulu-Natal. I stayed in the hills instead of going to the beach, and I have no regrets.

Disclosure: This interview was not commissioned or compensated by the restaurant or guest estate in any capacity. Accommodation at Summerhill Guest Estate and the dinner at The LivingRoom were paid by the author at the standard rate.