Welcome to Madiba

Our restaurant offers a unique South African experience, the first of its kind in the United States. Since 1999 at our first restaurant in Fort Greene, Brooklyn we have proudly brought our guests traditionally prepared specialties from our nation. Never complacent, we added a second location in South Beach, Florida, and successfully sold it as our first franchise in 2007. Madiba restaurant pays homage to Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela and is dedicated to the future of South Africa, a future that promises greater cultural harmony, economic development, and collective enjoyment of a World in One Country. Our concept is steeped in the tradition of a Shebeen, the informal dining halls in South African townships. These gathering places are where South Africans leave the work day behind to embrace joy, laughter, community, and a little beer to boot. The Shebeen offers sanctuary to the weary and well-traveled; a visit to one is the ultimate experience of everyday life one can have while touring South Africa. From humble beginnings, South Africans townships - replete with history and culture - have flourished as the hub of activity and social life in each community. The feeling of Ubuntu -- humanity in the Xhosa language -- is the very core of each township's existence. Madiba restaurant is your gateway to South Africa. Through our electric cuisine, authentic music, arts & crafts, Homesick?^TM products, and highly successful catering business, we are celebrating and preserving the culture and vitality of a unique continent and extending it well beyond the shores of Africa.

We are honored to reinvest a percentage of our proceeds in the people of South Africa via the charities Ubuntu Education Fund, Ethembeni School of the Blind, Achilles, and others. Please see our Community Page for more information.

Your hosts,

Mark & Jenny Henegan