The best news in 18 months of the Corona Lockdown broke today, with the UK announcing that it will remove South Africa and 46 other countries from its Red List as of Monday 11 October. Only seven countries will remain on the UK Red List on Monday: Columbia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.
Vaccinated Visitors may enter the UK on the same conditions as those of UK residents, but may not have travelled in a Red List country in the ten days before arriving in the UK. South Africa has been on the Red List since December 2020.
A further positive step is that South Africans’ proof of vaccination will be accepted by the UK. South African travellers will have to show the results of a Covid Test. No hotel quarantine will be required from Monday onwards, a costly affair for travellers to the UK, having to stay in prescribed quarantine hotels at a cost of close to R50000.
At the launch of the first book by Denise Cowburn-Levy at Bokeh Creative Space in Sea Point last night, I was lucky to win a copy of her book ‘Around my Table’, for knowing the answer to a question relating to Chef Liam Tomlin, described by Denise as her mentor. The 260 page book is part memoir, part travel book to the West Coast, Greece, Italy, and Thailand, and part recipe book, with food associations with each region and country of her travels, including those of Cape Town. 
No food TV series has attracted as much attention as has Chef’s Table, the first series having been screened in 2016. Focusing originally on World 50 Best Restaurant chefs in the first four series, the fifth series, which began broadcast last Friday, focuses on a diverse mix of chefs with a story and passion: Cristina Martinez, a Mexican chef living in Philadelphia, and serving the Mexican speciality Barbacoa; Musa Dagdeviren focusing on preserving Turkish foods in Istanbul; Bo Songvisava preserving Thai food in Bangkok; and Albert Adriá in Barcelona, creating brand new cuisine. Three of the four chefs featured wish to preserve the tradition and heritage of the food they grew up with, whereas Chef Adrian Adria focuses on the future, reinventing food to make it exciting and unique. 