Former Scottburgh chef Kayla-Ann cooks up a gourmet storm

Kayla-Ann Osborn, an ex-Scottburgh local, is certainly making her mark in the culinary industry. At the age of 26, she is the executive chef at The Chefs Table in Umhlanga.

Kayla-Ann was born in Nelspruit and at the age of four, her family moved to Port Edward where they had a banana and macadamia farm. When she was 12 years old the family moved to Scottburgh where Kayla-Ann completed her schooling at Scottburgh High.

When asked about the South Coast, which she loves for its laid back atmosphere and buzz of the holiday season, Kayla-Ann said: “I love spending time at the beach, I also love the greenery, the sugar cane, the forests and everything in between.”

She still lives on the coast, but closer to the restaurant in Umhlanga.

Her culinary journey began at a very young age. “It started in the kitchen with my gran. I was fascinated by cooking from small and she taught me to cook. She is still the best cook in the world,” she said.

In high school, Kayla-Ann took home economics with Elizabeth Edwards who simply “fuelled” her cooking obsession even more.

“I honestly cannot remember wanting to go into any other career,” she remarked.

Kayla-Ann says that there have been so many highlights which have sprung from her time at The Chefs Table, that she could not possibly name them all. Some of the awards that stood out were The Eat Out Rising Star award which she received in 2017 when the restaurant was placed 15th in the country.

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Last year, Kayla-Ann also won a SASSI Trail Blazer award which recognises young chefs who make a difference to the sustainability of seafood. “This was a special one for me and hit very close to home,” she added.

One of the young chef’s more recent achievements is when Get It Magazine Ballito and Umhlanga, interviewed her and put her on their April cover.

Kayla-Ann has an incredible circle of women around her, that she not only looks up to but who are her pillars of strength. Her mother, sisters, grandmother and friends who are mostly in the hospitality industry, have always pushed her to do better and have had her back in all her endeavours.

Chef Jackie Cameron, who placed 5th in the country when she was at Hartford House, has helped Kayla-Ann tremendously and has always been her role model.

“No journey is ever going to be perfect and I think unless we have hard times, we won’t understand the magnitude of the good times,” explained Kayla-Ann.

She became a head chef at a very young age and had to learn a lot about people and how to manage them. “No one wanted a 19-year-old telling them what to do. The hours are long and they are hard, sometimes you wonder if giving up your social life and all the social norms are worth it, but all I have to do to remind myself it is and go back into my kitchen and cook,” she said.

Kayla-Ann said that failure is also hard, such as when you did not receive the awards you wanted and had to re-evaluate what you had done and where you had gone wrong. “No one wants to fail, but if you learn from it, what comes next is worth the failure,” she noted.

The best part of her journey so far has been at The Chefs Table. This is due, she says to her incredible team and what they manage to accomplish every day.

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To aspiring chefs or anyone wanting to get into this field, Kayla-Ann has the following advice for them. “My mum taught me from a very young age: do it properly or don’t do it at all. The hours are long, the industry is hard, do every task properly and with passion and you will rise,” she advised.

In May she will be jetting off to London to spend two weeks in the kitchen of Clare Smyth’s restaurant Core. Clare is a two Michelin star chef and has worked for the likes of world-famous chef Gordon Ramsay. Kayla-Ann aspires to be like Clare Smyth one day so this will be an unforgettable experience for the young chef who is going places.

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