This popular South African cooking couple, who have used social media to promote their relationship and cooking skills, has been nominated again for the DSTV Content Creator Awards.
Matt Howcroft and Tess Saunders, aka Mush Kitchen, are overjoyed to be nominated for the second time.
They combined their passion for food and content creation to create something worth sharing with Mzansi and the rest of the world. Mush Kitchen was nominated for last year’s awards and won the Foodie category.
The DStv Content Creator Awards are returning for a third year, featuring over 17 categories. The awards are intended to celebrate and recognize the excellence of content creators on social media.
Howcroft and Saunders create food content and post videos and photos to social media.
Saunders, 29, is a trained graphic designer, while Howcroft, 26, works as a chef. The couple met in Vietnam while both teaching English, and they eventually fell in love.
When they first arrived in Cape Town in early 2022, Howcroft was studying cooking and Saunders worked in social media. They then decided to create videos, which is how Mush Kitchen came about.
While still in Cape Town, they saw that culinary content videos were receiving a lot of attention online. Looking at some of the videos created by other creators, they decided to give it a shot themselves and see how it goes.
“I remember we looked at some of this stuff and thought we can also do that. Matt was a chef and I worked in social media, it was sort of a we may as well try it. If we didn’t do it then we would be doing ourselves an injustice.”
They both hail from food-oriented households, so cooking or creating food content comes naturally to them. They describe their families as living to eat rather than eating to live.
During their vacation overseas, the pair explored a variety of foods and eateries. Even today, they prefer eating Asian cuisine.
Mush was originally a nickname given by Howcroft to Saunders. In Vietnam, one of Saunders’ students called her Mushroom, which she thought was amusing.
Howcroft subsequently began calling her Mush. When they were looking for a name for their social media, Mush Kitchen seemed appropriate.
Their favourite meal to make for celebrating any occasion is carbonara, a pasta dish.
“It’s just become a meal we would always eat whenever we move into a new house or a new country, it’s like our comfort meal.
“Something sad or happy it’s just a nice way to calm us down and reconnect,” says Howcroft.
They both had full time jobs and being content creators started as a hobby. Mush Kitchen then started to gain a lot of following. Shortly after brand deals started rolling in and the money was also coming in at a capacity that was more than what they were earning.
Now they are full time content creators. They create videos on Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube.
When they got nominated for the Foodie Awards last year they did not expect to win, while they could not be there to personally accept their award they were happy to find out they had won.
