10 minutes with local taste makers

Back at Olivia’s Kitchen for my second visit in a week and I’m beginning to understand the appeal. This time, however, I’m seated on a plush leather couch with a regular. Kimberley Krieger is on a first-name basis with the waiting staff and Olivia’s is her playground. Go figure, since the twentytwo-year-old blonde bombshell is an interactive health and nutrition coach and the menu here is any foodie’s dream.

She’s small in stature, small as in tiny. But as the saying goes: dynamite comes in small packages. Kimberley is merely a year older than myself but in her midst I feel like I am in Little League – despite towering over her in height. She’s not only gained experience working in digital marketing but also completed a cookery course and has become a qualified nutrition coach – the full package of a health tastemaker.

Major props go to individuals such as herself who not only know what to cook but how to cook it and then – on top of it all – make it look damn pretty in the digital space. A quick look at her Instagram (@kimberleykrieger) and you immediately gather that she’s a serial perfectionist. Kim has managed to pull off the impossible (or, at least, extremely difficult) feat of maintaining a colour-coded, cohesive content spread while still serving sufficient, superior recipes and wholesome selfies.

Her family owns and runs the wildly successful Guesthouse Voigtland. Being the 5 th generation to do so, the stakes are high. But with three semi-domesticated giraffes and Kim in the kitchen, they’ve managed to not only keep up, but flourish in the wavering economy.

She is not another yuppy vegetarian preaching that a lifestyle of zero meat consumption is the be-all and end-all.

For a foodie such as herself, the greatest reward is seeing her impeccably thought-out recipes and execution thereof put smiles on guests’ faces.

She is not another yuppy vegetarian preaching that a lifestyle of zero meat consumption is the be-all and end-all. In fact, having gone vegan full-on for five years and suffering serious consequences, Kim approaches her nutrition coaching with an all-round view. She takes into consideration the factors that many a meat-nay-sayer neglects – lifestyle, budget, blood group and occupation. You see, it’s easy to coach and coax clients into a one-size-fits-all quick fix, but Kimberley chooses to design sustainable lifestyle solutions rather than cut-throat diets that – as we all know – don’t last.

In her IGTV videos, Kimberley shares spectacular and scrumptious step by step tutorials. And if you thought that the skill of assembling avocado roses is reserved for influencers and vegans, you are mistaken. She simplifies the recipes we drool over, making all of her ±4k followers bonafide badasses in the kitchen. Be right back – I’m baking her marbled banana bread.

Charene Labuschagne