Where Our Steak Begins

Every great steak starts long before it reaches the grill. It begins in the mist-covered mountains of Eswatini, where Nguni cattle have roamed for centuries. This is the story of how we found our source — and why we have never looked back.

The First Visit

I remember the morning I first drove into the Malolotja highlands. The road narrows as you climb, and the air changes — cooler, cleaner, carrying the smell of wet grass and wood smoke. Farmer Bongani Dlamini met me at the gate of his family's land, which has been in his family for four generations. He did not say much at first. He just pointed toward the ridge, where a herd of Nguni cattle moved slowly through the morning mist.

Nguni cattle are unlike any other breed I have worked with. They are compact, hardy animals, built for the terrain they inhabit. Their coats come in every combination of colour — rust, cream, black, and brown — and their temperament is calm in a way that reflects the unhurried pace of the land they live on. Bongani told me that his grandfather always said a calm animal gives better meat. After years of working with Nguni beef, I believe him.

"A calm animal gives better meat. The land, the grass, the pace of life — it all ends up on the plate."

What Makes Nguni Beef Different

Nguni cattle are grass-fed on natural highland pastures without supplementary grain. The result is a leaner, more intensely flavoured beef with a distinctive mineral quality that you simply cannot replicate with feedlot animals. The fat is distributed differently — more intramuscular, finer in texture — and it carries the flavour of the grass the animal ate. When you cook a Nguni ribeye over hardwood coals, the fat renders slowly and bastes the meat from within. The smell alone tells you something is different.

At Joanna's, we receive whole carcasses from Bongani's farm, broken down in our own preparation kitchen. Nothing is wasted. The off-cuts become our stocks and sauces. The bones go into the marrow butter that accompanies our tomahawk. The trim becomes the filling for our beef croquette starter. This is what nose-to-tail sourcing looks like in practice — not as a marketing phrase, but as a genuine commitment to the animal and the farmer who raised it.

The Dry-Ageing Process

After the carcass arrives, the primals go directly into our dry-ageing cabinet, where they rest at a controlled temperature of 2 degrees Celsius with precise humidity management. We age our standard cuts for a minimum of 35 days. Our signature Nguni tomahawk is aged for 60 days, which concentrates the flavour and creates the characteristic dark crust that forms on the exterior of the meat.

Dry-ageing is a slow process that requires patience and attention. Every two days, I walk through the ageing room and inspect each primal by hand. I am looking for the right colour, the right firmness, the right smell. When a cut is ready, you know it — there is a depth to the aroma that is almost nutty, like toasted hazelnuts and dark chocolate. That is the Maillard reaction beginning before the meat has even touched a flame.

"When a cut is ready, you know it. There is a depth to the aroma — almost nutty, like toasted hazelnuts and dark chocolate."

Why Provenance Matters

South Africa has an extraordinary agricultural heritage that is still largely unknown to the fine dining world. Nguni cattle are indigenous to southern Africa — they are not an imported breed optimised for yield. They are part of the landscape, part of the culture, and part of the food history of this region. When I serve a Nguni tomahawk at Joanna's, I am not just serving a piece of meat. I am serving a story that connects Sandton to the Eswatini highlands, and a guest in our dining room to a farmer who has spent his life caring for his land.

That connection is what drives everything we do in this kitchen. We are not chasing trends or importing techniques from elsewhere. We are building something rooted in where we are — in the soil, the seasons, and the people of southern Africa. The steak is the beginning of that story. Come in and taste the rest of it.