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Fordsburg is many things, with many histories and many present realities. To try to understand it, you need to know a few things. Ideally, you should also be hungry.
Like much of Johannesburg, its beginnings involve gold and somebody spotting an opportunity. As people arrived to make their fortunes on the reef, developers realised they would need somewhere to live. The Ford & Jeppe Estate Company established Fordsburg in 1888, close to the mines and well positioned to accommodate the working people keeping this new city moving. There were houses to sell, businesses to open and money to be made. A fairly Joburg arrangement.
Since then, some fairly significant chapters of the city’s history have played out here. Fordsburg Square was the site of the final battle of the 1922 Rand Revolt. Today, a plaque on the old public toilet building commemorates it. In the Fordsburg of my visits, you can contemplate that history within reach of a chicken tikka stand.
Then there’s the Indian influence, which has become inseparable from the neighbourhood’s identity. In Johannesburg, Indian traders helped shape Fordsburg’s commercial life. Over generations, groceries, spice shops and family businesses became part of its everyday rhythm. Names such as Akhalwaya became familiar to people for spices and last fast foods.
For Muslim customers, the importance of neighbourhood food businesses also extended to knowing where they could eat. Long before halal options became commonplace across major takeaway chains, these were places that understood their customers and catered to them. People returned, brought their children and developed very firm opinions about whose sandwich was best, turning these places into institutions.
Eating in Fordsburg also went hand in hand with going to the movies. Fordsburg had a thriving cinema culture, with picture houses including the Avalon, the Lyric and the Majestic. A double feature was an outing, and the outing extended beyond what happened on screen. There were friends to meet, people to impress and, in the stories people still tell, future husbands and wives to encounter.
All of this unfolded within the restrictions and upheaval of apartheid. Remembering the pleasure people found in these places means remembering the conditions in which they made that pleasure possible. A cinema and somewhere to eat could provide a precious stretch of ordinary social life, in spite of the inescapable realties of the system.
And cinema crowds needed feeding. Next to the Avalon, Kentucky Milk Bar became part of that ritual.
Today, it stands in a different Fordsburg. Familiar names such as Akhalwaya’s and Solly’s Corner remain part of the neighbourhood’s food vocabulary, alongside Harry’s Café and World of Samoosas. Around them, successive arrivals have added their own cooking, shops and languages. Pakistani, Egyptian and other Middle Eastern influences sit within a much wider mix. Fordsburg has continued changing, as it always has.
There’s also the wear of present-day Johannesburg. The neglect is difficult to miss, and there is no point pretending otherwise. But spend time here and you will also find people opening their shops, preparing food, greeting regulars and getting on with the work of keeping a neighbourhood going.
At 95 Central Road, Kentucky Milk Bar is still doing exactly that.
Mohammed “Mo” Adam’s family bought the existing business in 1968, when it sold bread and milk. The Kentucky name was already there. Its origin remains something of a mystery, even to Mo. The family kept it, and nearly six decades later it is still above the door.
The signage also deserves a closer look. The silhouetted figures under the lgoinclude Mo’s late uncle, Junior Adam, and Sheriff Khan. The imagery outlines an old courthouse photograph, and the shop’s “Home of Legends” branding belongs to that family and neighbourhood history.
Inside the store, there is also enough Coca-Cola memorabilia to send you down an entirely different conversational path. The collection gives parts of the shop the feel of a small Coke museum.
If you go, the Kentucky Special is the order to consider: a substantial toasted sandwich packed with steak, polony, a burger patty, egg, cheese, salad and masala chips. There is a lot happening between the bread.
You can also keep things relatively straightforward with a classic steak, cheese and chips.
For all the history surrounding Kentucky Milk Bar, the food still has a job to do to keep people coming back. Memories might bring an old customer through the door, but a good sandwich gives them a reason to come back next week.
And that is what I like about this place. You can trace a little of Fordsburg through it: the families, the cinema crowds, the changing neighbourhood and the stories people have held on to.
Go to 95 Central Road. Give yourself time to talk to Mo. Have a look at the photographs and the Coke collection.
And get a damn good toasted sandwich.
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