Prue Leith to visit South Africa in 2020

Restaurateur, chef, cookery writer, television presenter, novelist and business women to celebrate her 80th birthday on home soil

Johannesburg, 30 October 2019: Prue Leith has announced that she will be returning to South Africa for two weeks in February 2020. One of the world’s most well-known restaurateurs and culinary experts, Prue was born in South Africa, and will be visiting the Prue Leith Chefs Academy, and promoting various projects including her cookbooks, novels and spectacle range. 

After a week in Cape Town, Prue will visit the Prue Leith Chefs Academy in Gauteng, where she will spend time with students and alumni. The Academy, established in 1997, has become the go-to college for chefs looking for interns or apprentices in the kitchen. “The Prue Leith Academy is my dream of a chefs’ school with that proper mix of professional training, practical experience that engenders a life-long obsession with, and real love of good food” said Prue. 

In what is sure to be a treat for foodies, Prue will be promoting her latest cook book while in the country. Titled PRUE, it is a compendium of her all-time favourite recipes, from modern vegetarian ones developed last year to classical dishes she learnt 50 years ago. “I stopped writing cookbooks and food columns in the fifties to give myself time to write novels. But then, TV (The Great British Menu, and the Great British Bake Off) pulled me back into the foodie world. Food has changed so much I couldn’t resist publishing again. PRUE is full of modern, undaunting, original and quick-to-do, recipes.”   

Continuing with her literary ventures, Prue’s latest novel, The Lost Son, the third book in her trilogy, the Angelotti Chronicles is now available. The three books are stand-alone stories, each covering a generation of the Angelotti family. As in the first two books (The House of Chorlton and The Prodigal Daughter) the new book is a tale of love and secrets against the fraught background of the restaurant industry. Prue says, “Like all my novels, this is a love story and somehow a lot of food has crept into it. It is also about adoption, a subject that has fascinated me since I adopted my Cambodian daughter Li-Da, forty-plus years ago. Li-Da now has adopted a baby boy, and my new(ish) husband John, also adopted, searched for his birth mother when he was in his fifties – a story line I stole for The Lost Son.”   

One of Prue’s recent ventures is a range of colourful and vivacious spectacles, Prue at Ronit Fürst, available at select optometrists across South Africa. Prue had worn Ronit Fürst’s colourful and funky glasses for years when she won Spectacle Wearer of the Year in England. As a result of the press and interest this created, she and Ronit decided to launch the colourful and unique Prue at Ronit Fürst eyewear range. Often seen as an advocate for colour in older ladies, the spectacle range is designed to be a morale booster for anyone enjoying a spirited splash of colour.  

Prue also hopes to meet the stockists of her range of greetings cards which are also sold in South Africa. “I am an inveterate businesswoman” she says. “I just love trade, whether in the food world, books, fashion or homewares. I just can’t resist putting my oar in.’

“I can’t wait to celebrate my 80th birthday back in South Africa” said Prue. “I am looking forward to seeing family and friends and reconnecting with business associates and meeting new ones while I’m there. “There is nothing like South Africa for warmth, hospitality, beautiful scenery and lovely people.”