About Me & Food and the Fabulous®
Hello and welcome to Food and the Fabulous! My name is Ishay Govender and I’m a freelance travel, food and culture journalist and writer, blogger, cook and explorer. Take a look at my welcome video on my Food and the Fabulous Vimeo channel.
I showcased this video at the Getaway Travel Blog Conference, where I presented a talk on Building a Blog Identity with Integrity.
What I do
I took the plunge and transitioned from the corporate world as a commercial law attorney; now I travel at every opportunity and write about my travel and cultrual discoveries for a variety of print and digital media, such as Saveur, Food & Wine, Extra Crispy, Nat Geo, Food 52, The National (UAE), Literary Hub, TASTE, Mail & Guardian, Food &Home Entertaining, Business Day and others. My first cookbook: Curry – Stories & Recipes Across South Africa (2017) is available at bookstores around South African and online at Exclusive Books and Loot.
My primary interests are social and cultural anthropology, and how food bridges the gap between exploring the unknown and understanding cultural behaviours. I’m working more in the realm of social justice too, and engaging in issues on equality, race relations, history, servitude and women’s rights which syncs well with my legal background and interest in human rights advocacy.
I also work with a number of non-profit organisations and advocacy groups to assist with literacy, women’s upliftment and food security.
To access my Media Kit, plus more on projects and who I write for: F&F Media Kit latest 6-15
Awards
I was selected by the Mail & Guardian as one of their 200 Top Young South Africans for 2014, for contributions to media. Food and the Fabulous®, an independent blog won the Best Food and Wine Blog at the 2011 South African Blog Awards, barely a year old. Now, my online ‘journal’ has become a record for my family with some of my very favourite recipes. My first cookbook: Curry – Stories & Recipes Across South Africa (2017) was selected as the best book in South Africa overall, to represent the country at the World Gourmand Awards 2017.
My Approach
I work closely with a number of social welfare causes from the National Cookie Swap to Edible Garden projects and the Food Bank. I can be found behind the phone screen capturing micro stories on Instagram and Vine, or in the kitchen, stirring the pot. I’m the friend who will feed you a second helping.
View My Work
To view my published work, please visit https://www.ishaygovender.com/.
I’m available for hire as a travel and food writer, photographer and recipe developer.
I’ve been engaged by the Tourism boards and foreign embassies of South Africa, Mauritius, Dubai, Poland and Malta to work on crafting stories and social media posts about the culture and cuisine of the countries.
To access my Media Kit, plus more on projects and who I write for: F&F Media Kit latest 6-15
A note to PR Agencies and Advertisers
Food and the Fabulous® does not publish press releases, promotional material, solicit freebies or accept guest posts. This website is advertisement free.
I am available, however, to collaborate with your client to develop recipes or write stories, if there is a fit.
If you have any information that you think could be pertinent to the articles I write about food, travel and culture, I’m waiting to hear from you.
All my work: writing, images, video and audio is protected under a Creatives Commons License:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.