Head chef and co-owner of Stellenbosch restaurant Melfort Tasmin Reed, talked to SMF News’ Grace Henderson about her journey from an autoimmune disease diagnosis to healing through food.
Head chef and co-owner of Melfort, Tasmin Reed, opened her restaurant in 2024. “Because of my age and diagnosis, I felt like I had an obligation to share with our generation that you can do hard things,” says Reed, who was diagnosed with IgA nephropathy in 2021. PHOTO: Grace Henderson
It is early 2021. The alarm sounds at 4 am, and Tasmin Reed is awake. She dresses in a white double-breasted jacket, a skull cap, and an apron, and begins her 16-hour shift at Salsify, an award-winning, fine-dining restaurant in Camps Bay, Cape Town.
Having graduated from Cape Town’s Silwood School of Cookery in 2020, Reed’s culinary career had a clear trajectory. She had been working at Salsify for over a year, and had recently submitted her resignation after securing a position abroad.
“I had a job lined up at Quay, one of the top fine-dining restaurants in Australia,” she says. “I had so much drive because I knew what I wanted to do. My life was set up: I was going to Australia.”
In hopes of traveling during the Covid-19 pandemic, the then-20-year-old chef received her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. But what appeared to be common side effects of the vaccination soon proved to be far more severe.
“My body was obviously predisposed to something, and [the vaccine] just set up the perfect environment to trigger something within me. That day, I literally started having an autoimmune disease,” she says.
Melfort’s head chef, Tasmin Reed, prepares a lemon healing tea before the lunch rush. Reed is a keen bee keeper, as she says their hums aid in regulating the parasympathetic nervous system. PHOTO: Grace Henderson
A career cut short
That same year, in 2021, Reed was diagnosed with IgA nephropathy. This kidney disease, which develops from immunoglobulin A (IgA) protein build-up in the kidneys, has no cure.
“My mind was still the same, but my body was completely different,” she says. “It felt like I was mourning myself.”
In the two weeks following her diagnosis, Reed balanced shifts at Salsify and doctors appointments, in hopes of remedying her illness and staying on her culinary track.
“During that time, I damaged my body so badly, because kidneys don’t regenerate. They’re damaged permanently,” she says. “And I knew that. But to stop meant giving up.”
Despite being told that she would “never be a chef again”, Reed continued to endure long shifts and ignored her worsening condition. “I knew I had to leave my job, because the doctors had told me. It was just about when.”
Reed recalls her final day at Salsify: “I didn’t admit it, but I was struggling. The head chef had given me a list of demands. I stepped out of the kitchen, and I broke down. I just cried.”
“It was then that I knew I wasn’t coming back.”
In her last conversation with Salsify’s head chef, Ryan Cole, Reed remembers that he had said to her: “Stop thinking about why this is happening to you, and start thinking what you can do about it.”
In September, Reed resigned and moved back home to KwaZulu-Natal.
“I had no job, and I couldn’t pay rent. My whole life had unravelled, and I was heartbroken,” she says.
Having opened in September 2024 on Marianne Wine Estate, Melfort was awarded a Dineplan Reviewers’ Choice Award in 2025. PHOTO: Grace Henderson
From broth to books
Having been at home for three months, Reed received a phone call from her alma mater, Silwood School of Cookery, recruiting her to teach.
“I knew I was never going to be a chef again, and it meant I could get weekends and evenings off,” she says. Reed began her career as a teacher in January 2022, and saw it as a way to remain in the industry.
Yet, it was far from an ideal compromise.
“It was so good to do something with food and to teach and inspire people, but it just didn’t scratch the itch,” she says. “I was also still unwell, and I knew something had to change.”
Following a kidney biopsy, Reed was told that she would have to take corticosteroids – synthetic medications that mimic the body’s natural cortisol hormone – every day for the rest of her life.
“As a 20-year-old, what would that mean for my quality of life? How long would my life be?” she says.
This feeling of unease led Reed to a wellness facility in Somerset West that offers alternative healing therapies.
“I had never tried anything like that before, but I had nothing to lose. I was pushed into a corner, and I had to start questioning what is right,” she says.
At the centre, Reed began a 21-day detoxifying programme, and reduced her diet to sweet potatoes, sauerkraut, and bone broth. “Whatever they told me I shouldn’t eat, I just did it. I felt like I was going to die, and if this is how I could live, I would cut out anything,” she says.
“It was great because I started to feel better. I implemented natural things that sustained my life, rather than enduring the negative effects of cortisol.”
As a chef, Reed’s new way of eating also forced her to be innovative in the kitchen.
“I had such a small gap to work in that it made me really creative with food,” she says. “Having such a restrictive diet has also made me exceptional with dietary requirements.”
Pictured in their outside dining area, Melfort’s head chef, Tasmin Reed, is an advocate in supporting local artisans, and locally sources all of the restaurant’s crockery. PHOTO: Grace Henderson
Planting the Melfort seed
“This was my routine; I would teach students, and then I would go home and cook the most amazing dinner for Nick and me.”
This routine would change in November 2023, when Jeremy Melvin, Nick’s father, asked if she wanted to open a restaurant.
“He wanted to fund it,” she says. “Nick’s family had seen me go through everything. They were there through it all.”
Reed took her chance and spent December 2023 formulating business plans, budgets, and recipes, and started 2024 location scouting.
“I would not rest until I found the right location. I was still at Silwood, so for two months, every weekend I would drive from wine farm to wine farm,” she says. “I did not sleep. I wanted a place that felt right.”
This led Reed to Marianne Wine Estate, on the slopes of the Simonsberg Mountain near Stellenbosch.
“This was the right place. I left Silwood in June, and we opened on the first day of September. It was a dream,” she says.
Creating Melfort
“It comes back to the statement: stop asking yourself why this happened to you, and ask yourself what you can do about it. Melfort is what I did about it.”
Named in honour of her late grandfather’s farm in Zimbabwe, Reed says Melfort is an ode to the healing she found through food, and turning restriction into invention.
Known as “farm-to-table eating”, the short walk from the car park to the restaurant’s doors is lined with garden beds, sprouting basil, rosemary, and dill.
“Our little garden plants a seed in the guest’s mind,” Reed says. “Although it’s only growing the garnish that goes on the top of the dish, it already sparks intrigue.”
Nestled between a dam and vineyards, Melfort sources all of its produce locally.
“We support local farms that are half an hour away max,” she says. “They’re small, so if they run out of something, it has to come off the menu.”
She formulates the menu with the quality of ingredients front of mind.
“I am very conscious of the flour that we use, the salts, the oils, the spices, the quality of the meat, and the quality of the vegetables. It all links back to health.”
Nick, a co-owner in Melfort, shares a similar sentiment to the restaurant’s culture: “We don’t want guests to leave here feeling worse than when they first walked in. We want to show people that there’s another way of doing life.”
Stellenbosch restaurant Melfort’s property houses a pig pen for sustainability purposes. “They’re our friends and they eat the food scraps. They’re there to also educate people on how to be sustainable, even at home,” says Tasmin Reed, the restaurants’ head chef. PHOTO: Grace Henderson
A story of perseverance
Donned as the 2026 winner for the LUXE restaurant award as a “hidden gem”, Reed is driven to show people that “they can heal through food”.
“We change the menus each month,” says Leanke Peek, head of pastries at Melfort. “It’s a lot, but Tasmin is a great leader, and she gives plenty of creative freedom.”
July’s menu features Franschhoek trout, roasted Jerusalem artichoke, and pear, frangipane and chocolate tart. Reed is excited about the seasonal addition of guavas, and hopes to one day expand their “little garden” into a field that supplies their kitchen year round.