Johannes Richter

The Training 2017 marks the key transfer point in Richter’s career: the year he entered the family business at Summerhill Guest Estate. For a chef born in Germany, that step placed his cooking into a Durban setting and tied his day-to-day work to a family address rather than a detached restaurant model. At the same property, Johannes Richter became chef and owner of The LivingRoom. The role carries two obligations at once: kitchen authorship in service, and stewardship of a house bound to family.

The Lineage Richter’s line is familial before it is institutional, running through Summerhill Guest Estate. Joining the business in 2017 made his cooking part of a Durban estate, not an outside concept. His own words frame the intent plainly: "The aim has always been to come back home and start a venture that instills Durban and its next generation with pride in that we can offer one of the country’s best restaurants by doing what we do best: being ourselves." That statement sets the register of the work: home, next generation, Durban pride, and a deliberate refusal to outsource identity. The restaurant follows that lead, with place doing the heavy lifting.

The Table The LivingRoom’s menu is built as a garden-to-plate expression of Durban and KwaZulu-Natal culinary diversity, with French finesse and Asian flair in the frame. The language is precise: garden, city, province, and two additional culinary registers, held together on one menu. In 2022, the restaurant received Eat Out Woolworths Restaurant of the Year. Richter has tied that recognition to the seasonality of the province, saying, "This is the most beautiful time of year to be in KwaZulu-Natal."

In Their Words “The aim has always been to come back home and start a venture that instills Durban and its next generation with pride in that we can offer one of the country’s best restaurants by doing what we do best: being ourselves.” “This is the most beautiful time of year to be in KwaZulu-Natal.”