Blackhorse Lane Ateliers

In the winter of 1987 my father, Ali Dirik, embarked on his voyage to London via Istanbul with a small suitcase, a job offer to work for a Cypriot businessman as head chef, and very little else to acclimatise to the UK. No family members, friends, ties or connections. 24-years old with no grasp of the language or culture which awaited to greet him like an electric shock. After reluctantly leaving my mother and 1-year old sister behind, he began his journey  with the hope of a good salary and a settled resident status to allow his young family to join him at a later date. It was a typical immigrant’s tale.

On the same flight was Bilgehan Ateș, or Han, as he prefers to be known, then just 19-years old. Fresh-faced, cultured, intelligent, he too held ambitions of living, studying, working, and thriving in this city that we all call home today.

The two young men were not sat on the same aisle but noticed one another as the flight took off. One imagines a distant nod of the head as they set upon their respective ventures. A fleeting glance. Fellow passengers scanning their surroundings.

 

When the plane diverted on the way to stop in Belgrade and passengers disembarked briefly, both ended up at the same Balkan airport bar. They finally formally met, spoke, shared a few drinks, and bonded sufficiently so that they then sat next to one another on the second leg of the trip. Again, you’d imagine they spoke a little more, drank a few more rounds, and when alighting the plane and heading to their next stop, they bid one another adieu with no realistic expectation of meeting once again. A time before mobile phones, emails, social media, and with neither having a set permanent address, it must have felt like one of those brief but pleasant encounters which are a one-off memory.

Ali, with the little cash he had in his pocket, hailed a cab from Heathrow to an address he was instructed to temporarily reside in – a building in Hackney best described as a squat for newcomers. He arrived late in the night, was allowed inside, and started to unpack when at midnight the doorbell rang. Hearing the landlady answer the door to the voice of a man he felt sounded mildly familiar, he petered out of his room to check the latest newcomer, desperate to feed the hunger of his curiosity.

It was Han. The same young man he met on the flight, shared a drink with at the bar, and said farewell to at the arrivals gate with neither having any knowledge of the other’s future movements.

Both men were pleasantly shocked, a little taken aback by the strangeness of the coincidence, and as the Turkish-deriving word would attest, accepted this was their “kısmet” (their fate). Unbeknownst to one another, via different channels and connections, both were informed to go to a particular address which temporarily housed immigrants from Turkey. Both had this home as a first port of call whereby with future work and earnings, they would find their own spare rooms to move out to.

 

 

For years, to this day, my father Ali and Han Abi (a term we Turks use to address elder gentlemen) remain friends. What started as a chance encounter and followed by a very peculiar residential coincidence, built the foundations of a friendship and mutual respect which has run deep for almost 4 decades.

Whilst my father built a legacy as a pioneer of Turkish cooking in the UK, bringing the first ever ‘Ocakbaşı’ to these shores and formed a culinary dynasty with the creation of Mangal 1 and Mangal 2, Han Abi has transformed the textile and denim industry in the UK. Honing his craft with the former industry for over 20 years, then venturing in the restaurant sector in Stoke Newington with the much acclaimed ‘Homa’ restaurant, he has since formed Blackhorse Lane Ateliers in 2005, in Walthamstow, the nextdoor town to where Ali Dirik and even your narrator resides in Chingford. What started as a denim-focused business specialising in jeans has evolved to an array of garments and the formation of 2 flagship stores located in Coal Drops Yard and Soho. Visit their website (https://blackhorselane.com) and see for yourself – their designs, quality, look and feel are superlatively brilliant.

Two immigrants, one journey, a binding success in their respective and occasionally overlapping fields. On the latter point, this is where Mangal II comes in.

 

I have known Han Abi all my life. Whilst in my younger years I recall him dining at Mangal II with his family and friends, and my family dining at Homa on a number of occasions, I never truly knew him that well, the same way you don’t fully interact with your parent’s friends on a grown-up level until you reach a certain age and certain engagements arise which enable the opportunity to get to know these elder figures on a more balanced, adult level. That was presented to me when he came in to dine at the restaurant 3 years ago. I, by then a man in his 30s and running the restaurant, got talking to Han Abi and it’s from there my knowledge and interest in Blackhorse Lane Ateliers hatched. After he left, I started my research into what they do and immediately felt like there must be a collaborative process there for the taking that will benefit both parties. I saw their designs and knew that a Mangal II apron with their logo would transform our service. I reached out to Han Abi, we spoke, then both didn’t follow it up as 2 years passed by, but since Autumn 2024 we have been working on an apron design, which finally made production early this year. And folks, it is a thing of beauty. Imported Japanese fabrics, an enticing colour of charcoal, the ‘Mangal II’ logo and font at the bottom (printed locally in Stoke Newington), and a subtly fitting Blackhorse Lane Ateliers logo above, it ties in our mutual history with a contemporary, quality look which enhances the outerwear appearance of all our staff on the service floor, from runners to waiters to chefs. All one matching uniform apron.

 

Our next post on Instagram following this newsletter will show you the goods, modelled by my father when he and I visited Blackhorse Lane Ateliers 2 weeks ago. What was set up as a formal meeting with the intention of Han Abi showing Ali his factory and setting, turned into an hour-long trip down memory lane as they spoke, laughed, facetimed mutual friends who have since gone back to Turkey, and a lot of respect, love, and admirations for one another’s endeavours and success. Truth be told, my old man felt gleefully happy for having gone in and witnessed his friend’s warm hospitality. I, a fly-on -the-wall, felt privileged to be present in a factory room where my father’s eyes livened with sharpness and energy as the two men reminisced about the good old days of immigrant struggle and subsequent hustle that led to their families’ improvement in their standard of living.

 

It was a fucking cool day. And it’s a bloody cool apron. We sell them in-house at £75 each, with limited stock available. If you want one delivered in the UK, please email info@mangal2.com. If you don’t want to buy one, that’s also fine! Just know that the next time you come in to dine at Mangal II and you see this beautiful pinnie, there’s a deep-rooted and touching story of friendship, chance, and a merging of worlds behind it. We wear it with pride, a continuation of the cycle of my father and Han Abi’s journey, embodied by fabric and service.

Versace Blue Jeans

It’s quite hard to make and maintain healthy friendships when you run/work in a restaurant. The usual hours when people socially convene, do fun things together – you’re working. In fact, you’re serving or cooking for people during these exact moments. Your hours are anti-social and unless you were inclined for late night shenanigans with like-minded delinquents (like your narrator used to), your chances of having pleasant meet-ups, meals, walks and talks, are pretty much hinged on your days off, when you’re already feeling burnt out and not seeking any further human communication after a week of micro interactions with over 100 different customers. You’d rather stay in, have a quiet day, recharge and preserve a little sense of self to nourish your fragile little heart and mind.

 

With these factors in mind, a lot of my friendships tinged on my pals coming to me, at the restaurant, as a bridge between my ridiculous work schedule and their ordinary 9-5 jobs. Childhood friends, two of whom would visit me at the restaurant once a week. It became our routine, our medium for spending quality time together. Unfortunately, though, despite the longevity of our deep-rooted alliances, as my working life evolved, my bond with these two individuals became looser and looser. Frankly, we had fuck all in common by the end. Upkeeping these friendships felt like a dying marriage, both parties stubbornly partaking in a ritual where they’d visit me (separately), eat a shit tonne of food and not pay, conversations becoming tedious and downright irritating, and my annoyance and resentment growing by the week.

 

One of the friendships (of the two) ended 5 years ago. After he’d come and visit me every Friday for years, consuming all my food and drink and not offering to pay anything, ever, even once, we finally fell out for good. He was stood outside the front of the restaurant, smoking, when a homeless person asked him for a cigarette. He flat-out refused and became irate, running back inside to say to me “Can you fucking believe that guy asking me for a cig? That’s MY cigarette, I worked for it, I earnt it – I’m not gonna just give him one.” I looked at him, breath reeking of all the free booze he’d just downed, like he was an actual moron, unaware of his own lack of self. When he went back out and disappeared from my vantage point as I was busy working inside, he came back in to say he got jumped on by a bunch of boys and shouted at me for not being there by his side. Again, I looked at him, not a mark on his face or any signs of physical distress, and assumed he made it all up. When I stepped out of work with him by the end of my shift and probed this supposed incident, he became angrier, pushed me up against my restaurant’s shutters calling me a “cunt”, and tried to hit me.

I never spoke to him again, my supposed best friend of the past 21 years.

 

The other friend I mention, god, what an utter embarrassment.  Ours was also a long-term, school-related friendship which evolved particularly in 6th form. By this age, despite having known him for a few years prior, we became closer when I became quite ill through Crohn’s disease and missed a lot of schooling as I spent a prolonged period at hospital and on the surgery table. My confidence was at an all-time low, and his loyalty to me enduring and endearing when I needed it most. We’d be in his room, drinking Bacardi Breezers and Smirnoff Ice planning a night out most times. He’d brush his teeth relentlessly, 4 times a day, and would shower himself with Versace Blue Jeans aftershave. He’d spray so much, I’d have to leave the room. That sweet, sickly smell permeating through every pore on my small, unwell body as we’d hit the town, talk about the girls we briefly dated, try to find new ones, and come back empty handed and sad.

 

As the years passed, our common bond drafted in his romanticising our halcyon days back in 6th form, all the memories of our times together – which for me, were not quite as glorious as he remembered. The smell still stuck with me, repulsed me, to tell the truth, as he never switched odours through his formative years into adulthood. Worse, everywhere we went, he’d bring up “Mangal II” into every conversation, loudly, unnecessarily. Even on his stag do many years later, it was the one topic he’d bring up again and again. I found it all too much. He, by now a policeman, with all his policeman buddies, and me, the restaurant owner, had nothing in common. An avid fan of superhero movies and comics, and wrestling, and all things I considered supremely lame, he then developed a new addiction to having tattoos… of Marvel, DC, Star Wars characters all over his pasty flesh. He was tattooed all over his torso with stupid batmen and ironmen and other childish figures, and turn up at the restaurant wearing shorts regardless of the weather, so everyone could see the tapestry to geekdom. I would be mortified, desperate to end the friendship, but he’d insist on coming to the restaurant all the time to meet me, but mostly to have a full platter of food for free. I managed to end things 3 years ago, much to my relief, by simply refusing to be best man at his wedding. He insisted I was, and I replied “Hey man, we hardly hang out anymore and I barely know your fiancé, all we do is eat at the restaurant, I’d rather not be best man as it wouldn’t fairly reflect our friendship.” After his wedding fell through, so did our friendship, much to my relief. I recently checked and he’s since unfollowed me on Instagram. Truth be told, it’s the first time I respected him. At least he finally showed some conviction and dignity. Good for him.

 

Last month it was my birthday. As the owner of the restaurant, I intentionally keep my distance with staff. I couldn’t say any were my “friends”, because I’m always a bit reluctant to blur the lines. That isn’t to say that I don’t have a great relationship with many of the crew here – thankfully, I do, particularly our core team. But just as I have felt used and frustrated by past friendships who have merged our bond with dining and using the restaurant’s facilities out of their own greed and ego, I am equally reticent to break any employer-employee dynamics to keep things in balance.

 

As it was my birthday, I felt like I needed to take a few days off to spend with loved ones, my kids, my girlfriend, my actual real friends doing fun things. There was a glorious meal at a local Chinese restaurant with all my friends and family. A trip to the beach and an exhibition with my girlfriend. My kids bought me a cuddly goose toy, which they have now claimed as their own. But the truth is, I purposefully kept myself busy because I didn’t want to come in on my actual birthday fearing no one would particularly give a shit and I’d end the day feeling sad and resentful. I got a few messages from the team, here and there, and that made me feel a little less distant from everyone. But one gesture really stood out. It was 3 days before January 14th, and our kitchen porter, a gargantuan Romanian angel in his 50’s named Timur came up to me, rather shyly, and said “Hey, isn’t it your birthday soon?” I said “Yes, it is! How did you remember?!” He replied, “Well, I’m not sure if you’ll be in for it so I got you a little gift”. I was so taken aback, I almost collapsed into tears. I didn’t expect a thing, from anyone associated with Mangal II. I accepted the package with the utmost gracious thanks, and unwrapped it in the next room, away from prying eyes:

 

A bottle of Versace Blue Jeans aftershave.

 

I smiled, walked back in to thank Timur, and reminisced about my ridiculous old friend. And then I remembered, my son has never received any aftershave before, he is 9, slowly evolving to becoming an elder boy, and might appreciate this childish smell. When I asked what he thought of the fragrance, he said he loved it. I said, “Son, it’s yours.”

 

I’m forever grateful for Timur, and I truly value the gesture. The fact that his gift wasn’t in vain, that it’s passed on to my son and not being wasted away on my bathroom cabinet, fills me with a sense of continuity and relief. It’s not the present that counts, it’s the thought.

Oink!

What is a Turk? When your parents hail from a land that has conquered its neighbours, and been conquered by its neighbours’ multiple times, when the bloodline has mixed so indiscriminately that your DNA is filled like a United Nations pamphlet, can anyone really claim to be solely one nationality?

I can’t.

My parents are both Turkish and Kurdish, the latter of which I do not speak or understand a word of as it was considered a dangerous language to repeat at home due to political tensions in the 90s. Couple that in with the fact that my mum identifies as a Sunni Muslim, and my dad is agnostic, at best. Not only that but he is from an Alevi background, a religion many of you would not have heard of but which makes up to 10% of the Turkish population. Alevism is less religion and more culture, I would say. They are a shamanistic people who worship the sun, love folklore and music and arts, and are extremely tolerant and loosely liberal in their practices. And from personal experience, every Alevi-identifying person I know eats pork.

So, there I am, half Turkish, half Kurdish, a mongrel of a person with DNA tests stating that I am in fact mostly Persian. My mum’s grandfather was an Armenian priest. You add that all to the mix and it’s no surprise I identify first and foremost as a Londoner, having been born in Dalston - the one cultural heritage I can say I definitively feel at 100%.

I eat everything. My dad eats everything. My cousins eat everything. Much like Aziz Ansari’s character ‘Dev Shah’ in Netflix’s ‘Master of None’, growing up I would be going out to eat pork all the time and keeping it secret from my mum. The taboo, temptress pig and my dirty secret. I’d chew extra Wrigley’s gum as my breathalyser kryptonite and try and mask my loin-filled mouth when returning home.

And yet, we have never had pork on the menu due to cultural sensitivities and fear of a backlash from the Turkish community. I couldn’t identify one Turkish restaurant in the UK which has pork on its menu, which is ironic because almost every caff I know in London is serving bacon, black puddings, and Cumberland sausages, and is run by Turkish families. But restaurants? We stay clear of that minefield, of fear of being ostracised, judged, shunned, and attacked. Which is odd because the last time I checked, alcohol consumption was considered Haram, but every Turkish restaurant sells Efes and Jack Daniels. I guess there’s levels to this religion game, and the pig sits at the top of the devil’s tree, its snout the pinnacle of hell.

Well, Mangal II has always done things a little differently. It’s why we are such a polarising restaurant (just look at our Google reviews, either 5*s or 1*s, rarely much in between). The dining public either likes what we’re doing and gets it, or really, really fucking hates everything we stand for. And what do we stand for? We stand on the principles of not being bogged down by tradition, by expectation. We are a London restaurant, first and foremost – as my first ever newsletter attested. Secondly, we have Anatolian roots. We use local, seasonal British ingredients with Turkish spicing and flavours, and use that as a template to harness historic Turkish dishes with a modern, local twist. That’s it.

My dad would tell stories of his childhood, and on occasion, they would hunt and eat wild boar. Technically speaking, having pork on the menu would be somewhat authentic to the restaurant’s ideals, yet to this day we have not been brave enough to dip our feet in the pool of delicious lard.

On Sunday February 2nd, we will rectify that.

Recently, we have started working with Alba – a service run by my good friend Bruce Clyne-Watson, a delightfully mischievous Scotsman with a heart of gold, and crucially, an arsenal of outdoor cooking units – spits, grills, rotisseries, all very metallic and heavy and chained and barbarically delicious as he sets up shop in the outdoors and cooks at weddings, festivals, private functions, and with us. Working together, we will be fusing braincells and creating menus to be consumed across the UK and beyond as we bring the Mangal fire-cooking experience to whoever wants it. Our first foray was a local collaboration at Abney Park as we cooked whole lamb and did a Turkish-inspired Sunday roast, which was a great success. Our next venture will be at Mangal II where we will be cooking the whole pig on our grill.

It is a brave but necessary step as first and foremost we want to create another joyous Sunday to the paying public, working together again as we gain our match fitness for the Spring/Summer ahead, and fundamentally, I want to be able to serve pig here – even if it’s just this once. Working with our head chef Jack Earls, the menu is an absolute belter. As much as Bruce is a very proud Highlander, Jack has strong family ties to the west of Ireland in Cork, this is meat and drink for him, too.

It feels ridiculous in 2025 to have to write a newsletter to soft-launch my personal ties with pork-consumption to have to try and justify such an event, but the world is where it is, and we cannot outpace it with modernism any sooner than the forces will allow. We’ve had copious amounts of lamb on the menu, beef, chicken, quail, duck, but never the forbidden pig. Personally, I view all farmed animals under one umbrella: tasty delights. I am a man of no religion, and far as I can tell, a supremely vast majority of my carnivorous customer base indulge in pork. We will be treating the meat with respect and flavour, like any other we have served. The menu we provide is not Turkish by any stretch, but every dish is finished off in our Turkish ocakbașı, which aligns our ideals as a restaurant. That charcoal-infused smoke, that flavour to me is inherently Turkish.

I respect religion. I respect the right for any person to practice their beliefs as long as it’s a personal choice and not forced upon others. I believe in religious tolerance, love and acceptance for all – regardless of religion, race, age, sexuality, gender-identity, social-economic status, disability, et al. We are all one. And for me, a pig is just a pig. An animal like any other – one I happen to find tasty and worthy of being grilled as its fats melt away and drip onto the coals, creating a vaporous enveloping flavour bomb as it rises from the ashes and coats the meat.

So join us on our MangAlba adventure, arrive with open eyes, pure thoughts, and hungry bellies (we will be serving pork belly btw – probably one of my favourite things in this culinary world). We are stepping into territories new, brave Young Turks that we are. History may judge as either pioneers, or monsters, or fools. But for that one day we will be feasting here at 4 Stoke Newington Road like we have never before. Tickets are live. Go get ‘em. And if you’re planning a wedding, or a fancy garden party this summer, hit us up. MangAlba is coming to y

The Gift

Your inbox right now may be inundated with companies flogging gift card suggestions as a Christmas present for your loved ones. I get these too– straight in the virtual bin they go. I don’t even open the emails, and as I delete them one-by-one, I narrate a “fuck off” with each delete. It gives me a minor satisfaction, and I cannot help myself.

 

And here I am, writing our last newsletter of the year where I will try and convince you, the reader, to purchase a gift card from us here at Mangal II before Christmas Day as an offering for someone special in your life. I fully acknowledge the hypocrisy in my actions and hold my hands up (only for so long, because this piece here needs to be written and, well, I need my fingers). But we are all flawed and I am no exception.

 

Below I will list why you and your hard-earned money should part ways via the channel of a Mangal II Gift Card (available to purchase through our website under ‘Shop’). If the following doesn’t tempt you, nothing will! But I have faith – it’s that time of year where miracles happen, and in lieu of Christmas tradition, here are twelve reasons I can conjure:

 

1.        You would be paying for someone to have a meal here at Mangal II, most likely next year some point. It is useable for a good 365 days. It can be a rainy-day refuge for someone; a little pick-me-up when they need it most!

2.        We are not asking you for money to help us, I don’t know, open a new site and you get nothing in return. This is not a GoFundMe, not a Crowdfunder. This would be a meal you purchase for someone (or yourself)!

3.        I almost had a fight with a customer 3 weeks ago. He was an old man. Like, really old. Like, I don’t know – 75? I almost got in a fist fight with a 75-year-old man. He was being incredible rude and abusive all night, cornering me all evening (he was at least 6’5) and refusing to allow me space to clear his table or serve him food throughout, whilst belittling me and being incredibly condescending. All of his language had a colonial undertone, where he spoke down to me as if he were a pompous lord, and I was his servant, and by the end I simply told him to “get the fuck out of my way, and get the fuck out of my restaurant you prick” after he cornered me for a third time whilst lying about how cold his chicken was. My restraint in not hitting him after he said “Who’s the owner, I want to know your name” and I replied “I am” and he said “No, you’re not”, deserves some sort of reward in saintly patience. For every moment you, the reader, have been spoken down to over your race, colour, gender, orientation, class, I request you add a quid to your gift card and treat yo’self when the Mangal II mood strikes later next year. It will be an act of solidarity against the condescending upper classes and how they treat and views all “others”.

4.        Next year, we will be bringing out an array of outlandish dishes. Chef Jack, chef Jess, and the whole kitchen have incredible plans in the works and I for one am unbelievably excited to present it to you as and when they arrive. Today’s investment of a gift card will be richly rewarded by tomorrow’s 10/10 meal.

5.        I run this restaurant alone. It’s just me. Everything I make from this (barely breaking even year-upon-year) supports me, my parents, and my two children. We have no investors, no backers, no savings, no compassion from our landlord or Turkish customers who walk in without a booking and sit and eat and not understand what it is we do, who then proceed to leave a 1* review because what we do isn’t traditional, and this is then plastered on our Google rating and that drags our score down and it puts off prospective new customers. Buying a gift card today will ease our cash flow during a potentially very quiet January, whilst also affording someone (or yourself) a chance to dine here and really experience the joys of what we do.

6.        We released a book this year and it is a thing of beauty. When you enter our website to purchase a gift card, maybe you could buy a copy of the book, too? May as well, lads. I dare ya.

7.        We released a shoe with Puma after collaborating with END clothing this year. This, you cannot buy, as they only manufactured 300 editions but my word, what a shoe. And more so, what a team of angels they have over there at END. They flew my brother and I out to our dad’s hometown in Kayseri and we had a trip of a lifetime. It was magical. Please watch the video when you have 15 minutes to spare: https://www.endclothing.com/gb/features/mangal-ii-an-anatolian-odyssey
Anyway, by purchasing a gift card, the recipient be able to come in here and see the shoe on display like a gallery piece. Two experiences for the price of one! Who needs ‘Infinity Mirror Rooms’?!

8.        One in ten restaurants are expected to close next year across Britain. We have survived – and I don’t use that word lightly, for 30 years now, and we intend to stay afloat a few years yet. Support us; support all restaurants you care about, because I assure you, many won’t be around in a few years.

9.        Speaking of which, we entered our 30th year last month. Remaining open for three decades is no short of a miracle in our industry, especially as an independently-run business. Keep us going for a few years yet, because once it’s gone, it’s gone! There will not be a Mangal III.

10.  Sometimes you don’t know what to get someone for Christmas, and any material present carries the risk of being underwhelming. But a gift card from a great restaurant? Hell yeah, that is a great thing to provide someone you care about. You’re buying someone an experience, one they will undoubtably enjoy and savour, and they’ll leave that night happy and full, and they’ll probably send you a text thanking you, and you’ll feel pretty good about yourself. And it’s nice to feel good.

11.  Because we care. Like, everyone working here today at Mangal II, they all care. Our team are good people. There’s no workplace bullying. No cutting corners. No meanness. No lack of effort. We’re a small team, and a great team at that. I’d go to war with any and everyone in our roster, knowing full well they’ll have my back and I have theirs. A gift card will show how you support and love Mangal II and everyone working here. Rather us than some restaurant that’s plush with arsehole head chefs harassing people and owners from a hedge fund background expanding all the time. No soul, no character, no story. Just incremental growth at the expense of everyone else’s hard-worked labour. Boo! Not ‘ere, though! Not us!

12.  If that old man comes back in, I will punch him. I promise. I’ve never hit a customer (or elderly person before), let alone cursed at one, but I am willing to make an exception. I’m ready x

 

 

 

Cash Only

Of all the furore and backlash of Hugh Corcoran’s post about dining etiquette, the one detail which struck me wasn’t the fact that his establishment does not have an Instagram, or that they’re also a book shop, or that they serve £40 pies, or that you can book a table via sending a post card. It wasn’t even the language used – however divisive and reeking of an age of tradition, almost coming across as elitist or pompous.

I didn’t care for any of these details because I always expect this level of contempt for your average diner who does not have the means to fork out £60 on a meal by someone who refuses to even have an email set up for bookings or enquiries.

A couple of months ago I wrote a newsletter in the heat of the racist uprising in the summer, through the viewpoint of an actual thug. I wrote via the prism of racist individuals I’d encountered growing up in Chingford, and particularly channelled my neighbour in Waltham Abbey – whose horribly abusive behaviour towards my then wife and family forced me to sell our home and escape the daily harassment and fear we lived in.

I wrote it and received a lot of backlash for being classist. The racism I have encountered throughout my life has very often been at the hands of the working class, and with myself coming from a working-class background, I did not realise the discriminatory nature of the prose I produced until it was brought to my attention. Whilst I stand by what I wrote, because it was real to me and my experiences and my interactions growing up as a person of colour in the suburbs of London, I can also appreciate the condescending voice the piece may have elicited. But I always write what’s real to me and my feelings, and I have suffered substantial horrors at the hands of the protagonist-like figure in my piece. So, you know, it is what it is. I wrote what I knew, and it was channelled in anger and resentment at how I’ve been treated in this society. I should have mentioned it at the time, but the discourse and comments became so polarising (with some defending the piece and others condemning it) that I left it alone, hoping not to stoke any more fires.

Which brings me back to The Yellow Bittern. Whilst I could condemn his manifesto for dining out, I feel it would be hypocritical on my part after my recent creative output. What he wrote was tone-deaf and dripping in aristocratic belittlement towards your average diner and their modest means in the age of a cost-of-living crisis. But it was probably real to him and his blinders, shaped by his way of growing up and understanding of restaurants and what they should embody. So, I can’t knock that. I mean, I can, and I disagree wholeheartedly with so much of what he said, but I’d rather not dissect it bit-by-bit because I do not know this man and know how he thinks, feels. And I’m certain he wrote his piece in earnest and with the best intentions of preserving the future of his spot.

What really bothered me, however, is the fact that their café/restaurant/bookshop, is cash only.

This really irked me because it wasn’t scrutinised enough, nor was it the main topic of discussion.

When an ethnic restaurant is cash only, the narrative is “They’re tax dodgers”, “They underpay staff and use cash so they can claim benefits”, “They’re not contributing to the economy”.

When a painfully middle-class man runs a cash only spot, no one screams injustice. No one questions the intentions. No one accuses them of stealing, of ducking and diving, of hiding their figures from the tax man.

I’m not accusing them of doing so. The same way I don’t feel like Mangal 1 around the corner being cash only does. I just want a level playing field. And when questioned about their ethos with the stacks of cash in the register and none of the electronic receipts, the proprietor explained “Cards leave out interesting people in society who are cash-in-hand. Frankly, I’d also prefer it if clients didn’t use their phones.”

Erm… Ok then.

 

Before all this kicked off, a month ago I went to one of my favourite caffs in London – The Hope Worker’s Café in Holloway Road. I’ve been going there for years. It does all your breakfast classics, and lots of Greek homecooked dishes too. It’s cash only and it’s run by a middle-aged Greek couple. I love it.

I was there having breakfast on my own, minding my own business (I was allowed to use my phone here – imagine the luxury – being allowed to conduct such brutish behaviour in public!) when two builders came in, much like my old neighbour Terry who terrorised my family in Essex. As soon as they walked in, one of them said aloud “AHH this is more like it, a proper caff. Lovely” and he went to order at the till (as you must at this fine place). He requested some items, I forget which, because the next thing he asked was for a glass of tap water. The lady, the owner taking the order said, “I’m sorry but we do not serve tap water here, you can buy a bottle of water for £1”. The man, much like my old neighbour who I portrayed in my newsletter “We Want Are Cuntry Back (scroll down for it)”, was immediately apoplectic. “YOU DON’T SERVE TAP WATER? WHY THE FUCK NOT?!” His response was dialled up to 11, instantly. The lady calmly explained “Well, since Covid we stopped doing so because then everyone wouldn’t pay for drinks here and we lost money. It costs to use washing up liquid and there are water bills”. See, I think this is absolutely fair. In a caff where you can fill your belly for £4, it is completely right that the owner tries to squeeze profit out of the dried-up lemon, extracting the last sip of juice it can, because everything there is unbelievably cheap (and delicious – go, go, go). The man did not take kindly to her explanation and said “YEAH? WELL WITH AN ATTITUDE LIKE THAT I’LL TAKE MY BUSINESS ELSEWHERE! FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING CAFF, YOU FUCKING GREEK BITCH!”, and stormed out.

I was gobsmacked – did I really just witness what I did?! The entitlement of that bastard, the way he spoke to the older woman, the racist language, the contempt. It was horrible, and it triggered a lot of painful memories of men like him speaking to my own mother growing up, whether it was my parents’ ex-neighbour shouting at her because my siblings  and I were being loud, or another tradesman in a van yelling at my mum in traffic for a driving discrepancy, or my old head teacher at primary school berating my mum for making my brother and I have a circumcision (as is Turkish custom). I felt an immediate urge to console the woman but after asking her if she’s ok, she seemed to bat it away and started angrily reacting to what happened to her husband at the back in the kitchen in Greek. I left them alone, walked out, and felt rage. Rage at how easily and readily this man abused this woman.

The caff is cash only, prefers not to serve tap water, and is run by a small team. Much like The Yellow Bittern. I wonder if that horrible man went to the latter and tried to order anything, and was gently informed that they prefer if he didn’t have tap water but a gallon of wine instead. Would he react the same? In fact, I don’t have to wonder because I know the answer. Not a fucking snowball’s chance in hell. People feel more entitled to scrutinise ethnic minorities over the bourgeoise/white middle classes here because they feel above them. They can take the piss out of cash only takeaways in Whitechapel run by Bengalis when they turn up at 12am, belligerent and disrespectful, but not bat an eyelid at The Yellow Bittern because they explain that cash brings in interesting characters (in an age where reporting of crimes is rarely followed up by police and muggings are a-plenty in inner-London, who the fuck even carries cash around?!).

This for me was the most revealing reaction. Not the ridicule they received, but the apathy towards their outdated cash-only stance. I guess everything they preach is outdated. And that’s the way they want it.

Hot Grill Summer

As the weather cools, and the temperatures fall, Mangal II breathes again. The bookings increase, the finances stop getting pummelled, and there is hope. Every year, it’s the same. From June to August, as the fires burn the charcoal at our premises, my brain is inflamed and my chest bursts with demonic fear. “We’re fucked”, I keep telling precisely no one because I can’t bear to share my worst realities coming to light. So I keep telling myself “We’re fucked. We’re fucked. We are well and truly fucked”, as I lay awake at night tossing and turning, seeking peace and knowing it won’t arrive whilst the sun blazes.

Having a homogenous customer base is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you can make decisions with the menu and know the majority will receive it well. You know your clientele enough to believe that when something works, it will work for most. That’s because a substantial portion of our customers are pretty much the same demographic: Aged 25-45; middle-class; knowledgeable about food and produce; considerably cultured; excited to be here.

On the flip side, the following is problematic (for us, in a business sense):

-              They all go to Glastonbury and other festivals, so they eat out less in the lead up/aftermath to save money and social engagements until the party season ends

-              They all go on mini breaks abroad during the summer months, again cutting back on spend like meals out to balance holidays outgoings

-              They all want to be at a pub garden/outdoor al fresco dining space/a park somewhere, when the summer hits

-              They don’t crave hot-fire coal cooking when that is served up indoors, it’s practically the last thing they desire – ironically, anyone cooking up anything as long as it’s feasted upon outside is immediately favoured and sought after

 

I get it. When it’s 34C I don’t want to be at Mangal II either. Unlike you, the reader, I don’t have a choice. I have to suck it up and pray for rain (I am at my wits end by mid-July and will happily summon an ancient rain dance to the Aztec gods if it will bring results). Throughout these hellish months, the very season that those who are not in my position (as “fretful restaurant owner”) very much look forward to all year, our restaurant sees an average 25% drop off in revenue. Seeing as most hospitality venues are already on the knife’s edge when it comes to the fine tightrope between survival and death, that decrease is monumental.

 

But today, it rains. The air cools. Our smoke lures you in. And you are hungry. I silently pray my gratitude to the rain gods.

 

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Last week, much to my great shame, I had to go to a private members club. I can’t get into specifics but it was for a potential event to promote a thing related to the restaurant that is out soon, which you all should buy because the thing itself is great and my brother and I wrote and created it and, yeah, that thing itself – I am supremely proud of. But I digress. I had to go to a stupid club in the middle of central London to meet people who floated the idea of having a special themed evening promoting this very thing.

 

Prior to my arrival, at no point in the corresponding emails was I informed that I had to wear a blazer at said stupid club for stupid rich people. So, I arrived with my rain jacket, tote bag, trainers, like any normal mid-30s Londoner. I was early, which if any of you know me, is a rarity as I often run on “Turkish-time”. I was early because I was a little nervous, not sure what to expect. Upon entering, I was swiftly told by the man at the door that I may need to borrow a blazer when I go in. An immediate uncomfortable introduction for anyone. I walked in and the reception glanced me up and down a few times and asked me who I was here to see. After informing them, they told me they would check their diary to see if this was the case, and for the time being if I could please take a seat across them.

10 minutes passed and they didn’t say a word, whilst a multitude of extremely wealthy, mostly short men in their 50s arrived. They were greeted with warmth and courtesy, led to the bar, or upstairs. They all seemed to carry an umbrella, which the reception was more than happy to keep hold of whilst your Lucians, and Barnabys, and Bartholomews, were given a freedom pass to mingle and spend presumably £63 on a cocktail.

I sat there and waited, watching the movements of the elite. The lack of stress lines on their skin. The seamless steam of their ironed suits hanging elegantly off their torsos. The softness of their hands, untroubled, never clenched, never scarred.

They’re aliens to me.

That world is alien to me.

I sat there and waited, already regretting even entertaining the prospect of such a collaboration, knowing full well from the get-go I would not go ahead with it, and that I had turned up out of morbid curiosity.

The reception didn’t acknowledge my wait there once. I sat and waited, and by the end felt like one of the discarded umbrellas, lying in storage until its owner picked it back up again. But did I feel bad? No. The lack of hospitality aimed at me was presumably because:

1.        I’m not a member there

2.        I wasn’t wearing the correct attire

This was not on me, but rather, their outdated rituals. So, I thought “Fuck ‘em”. I sat, and waited.

The people I was there to see arrived, we went upstairs, and they floated ideas. By the end, I asked “Will I be paid for this event” -  to which, unsurprisingly, the answer was “No. But you get to dine here one evening with a +1”.

I think the last place on earth I would dine at is a private members bar, even if it’s free. But thank you.

I guess that’s how the wealthy remain wealthy. You invite a restaurant with a 30-year heritage to hold an event at your club, and assume by being invited and “accepted” in the first place, by virtue that is a currency which will feed the restaurant’s insecurities and desire to “belong”. You offer them status and a platform, rather than actual money. Because that’s all for you to keep and spend and circulate amongst your warped circle.

Mangal II does not need you. You clearly need Mangal II, to boost your “authenticity”. To sponsor an inner-city establishment owned by people of colour. To be “in” with the cool lexicon. Or whatever.

I’m not even angry at this exchange, just mildly bemused. That world, the elitism and its protection, seems so removed from reality. Where the rich only mingle with the rich, and a whole majority of society is excluded as they seek refuge inside the gates of gold. Where the food banks and the poverty of London is blocked by the noise of “Yah, yah, yah”.

I appreciate that the version of the restaurant today is not one which can feed the masses like it did in the past. We’ve changed substantially to pursue a gastronomic vision which cheap produce could not provide. I am guilty of that, and I know that in itself was an exclusionary act that shunned a lot of my old regulars who could no longer afford to dine at Mangal II as frequently as they used to. I apologise. I had to, otherwise my business would have gone bust and my livelihood put at risk. The old method wasn’t working anymore (for us), and I had to be proactive. That does not mean I am ignorant to the world itself, to its dangers, to its disparity between rich and poor. And the last thing I will ever tolerate at my own restaurant is a potential customer coming in and being treated as a lesser-being.

 

---

 

I fully recognise my disdain for the lifestyle of the supremely rich has a strong correlation with me being a business owner who worries about money. But at my core, I hate exclusionary behaviour. I hate snobbery, and I cannot stand exploitation.

 

So, we stay in our lane whilst they draw lines. Two asteroids orbiting but never colliding. One with substance, the other at a fragile risk if another element contacts it, smashing to smithereens. There’s more light over here, despite the darkening of days. And better yet, no dress code.

We want are cuntry back

We want are cuntry back

 

I’m Terry and I want ma cuntry back. I’m not raysis, I woz sayin to Hassan at the kabab shop lass nite “Haz, ur alrite, but it’s all dem other lot comin’ ere that take benefiz that riles me up.” And Has didn’t say nuffink but that’s only coz he new I woz rite. He usually gives me xtra free chips wiv my weekly orda but that nite he didn’t. Guess he forgot to. Next time I go in I’ll remin him that he owes me dose chips coz he usually gimmes it and I’m sure he’ll gimme what I’m owed and wot I dezerv. He’s lucky me and da boiz didn’t smash his windoze this week when we woz all out protectin are land. Fuckin police woz all der, stikkin up for all da scummy assilam seekaz. Fuckin police arrested sum of us lot. If ma grandad, who fort in the wor, saw wot happend he’d ov turnt ova in his grave. Police arrestin innocen BRITESH people who are tryin to do the polices job protectin the streets from all the forren rapiss and feeves and rapiss.

 

Anyway, I’m Terry and I’m angry. I tol my wife, well, ex-wife Sharon, dat it’s bad enuff the kids don wanna speak to me no more but tell dem ther dad is out there doin his part to mayk dis cuntry betta and get it back to wot it woz befor all da bordaz opend up and we lost wot dis cuntry woz all about. We woz an EMPIA, we ruled the world. We went to Afrika and Indya and Jamayka and Afrika and we went ther and we gave all dem lot a propa structa, we bult roads and mayd skools for dem and showd em how to live propa, and yeah, maybe we took sumfinks bak with us like tea and gold, but dats a small pryce to pay for wot we gave dem. And how do dey repay us? Dey all come ere and took all our housin and sure summof dem are alrite and dey worked for the NHS and they managd to fit in but all dem other ones can go do one. We’re full up, and every day mor and mor of dem try and get ere by boats tryna steal are jobs. Anyway, I woz sayin to Sharon “imagin if dem lot didn’t mayk it hard for me to get a propa job fings cud have gon differnt for all of us”. Sharon wozn’t gettin it tho, she sez “Terry, you literally were the worst husband imaginable. And a horrible father. You never tried to hold down a single job despite many chances. And whenever you had one, you spent all the money at the bookies and at the pub. I hate you. Please don’t make me call the police, you know you’re not allowed to contact any of us”. Sharon, always woz a sour puss. Never had a sens of humah. It’s alwayz “Police” this and “Restraining Order” that and “I’m counting to ten”. Silly Sharon, just doesn geddit.

 

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, sorry, I meant “Tommy Robinson”, he getsit. He sez wot all dem lot in the housiz of parlamen don’t say. I woz tellin my GP, Dr Singh, dat he’s lucky he’s gotta job ere treatin sik people coz if I had my way we’d have only Britesh doctors and Britesh payshunts. I woz tellin him how Tommy woz rite about are cuntry and how hard it is to get an appointman, and how dis cuntry is brokken. Dr Singh started bleedin off about how “years of austerity, coupled with gross negligence by the Tories, and a toxic media landscape, has perpetuated this divide in society and growing tensions between the working classes and the elite”. Honessly I couldn mayk out half the wordz he woz sayin. Maybe it’s his akkscent, I jus couldn understan coz of dat huge turban he woz wearin. By the end he stoppd talkin rubbish and gave me my rezults and tol me to cut back on the fry ups and cokayne and the fosterz. I woz fuckin livid, I woz gonna swing for him ther and den! Comin here and tellin me wot I can and cannut eat and wot I can and cannut stik up ma noze! I sez to him “Tommy Robinson doez cokayne all da tym and he's doin alrite, wot u gotta say about dat?! EH?!” And he goez “Tommy Robinson is literally in Cyprus right now, inciting hatred and fuelling a far-right civil war. Is this the man you look up to?” And I sez “FUCK OFF BACK TO UR CUNTRY U FUCKIN MUG!”

 

I left der pretty upset dat I’d been verbaly attaked by a dockta dats suppos to mayk people feel bettah. I needed to let off a bit of steam so I chekd my fone coz dat often helps distrakt me from all the fayk shit people sey nowadays. I log on to ma facebook to see wots actualluy goin on in the world, and I come akross dis t-shirt:

 

“Love: Kebabs

Hate: Racism”

 

I fort to maself “WOT???? Wots kababs got to do wiv anyfink?!” I love kababs, but I’m no raysis, I just like wot I like and I like Britten how it woz before. Den I got finkin “Kebabs… they’re mayd by Turks and they’re not whyte and dey got ere and took jobs and now dey feed us” and it got me reelly angry again. I wantd to tear oppen my stomak and pull out all da kababs I had yesstaday. I felt sik. I been eatin kababs all ma life and didn’t fink how forren it woz until I saw dat t-shirt on facebook. Den I lookd around my flat, and notissd more forren fings. I saw my frigg magnet from my trip to Benidorm. My bedsheits were from Ikea, which is from Belggim I fink. Good fink I never woshed it once coz it don’t deserve are clean water. My shoes had “Made In Cambodia” printtid in dem. My tv, where GB News woz playin, I realleyez woz mayd in Japan. My head woz spinnin. Evryfink woz forrren. I needed to get ma head klear. One bump of cokayn chilld me out a little. But I culdn’t believ wot I woz seein and realiyzin. I felt ma chess tytten and struggld to breev. I cud smell toast, like smoke all arroun me. Woz I dyin? I still had so much I wontd to acheev, like punchin a small brown elderly lady and torchin a mosk. My life couldn’t end now, could it? I fell, and bangd my head on the floor.

 

Well, I muss have a massiv head coz my neybah downsterz herd me fallin. Paulina, my neybah, she’s from Poland I fink. She ran upsters and nokked on my door but obviassly I woz unkonsush so I cuddnt respond. She musta nokked like 30 times and got no ansa. So she calld 999 and next fink I no I’m in an ambulans. The paramediks, I dunno if they woz Afrikan or Jamaykan or wot, but they woz definitly black. I woz scared dey woz gonna stab me but they took me to A & E and from der on the rest is a blur.

 

Been here 4 dayz now. There’s a Chineez fella across me, he’s old, doesn’t say a word to me. SO FUCKIN RUDE! One of da nurses told me he can’t speak since his stroke but I reckon that’s just an excuse. And people call me raysis! Unbeleevable.

 

I’m sad I can’t go on any of the peesfull protess. I’m stuk ere for a while whilst I get round da clok care by a bunch of forreners workin at the hospittal. But just you lot wait when I get out, I’m comin for ur town centre. I’ll smash evry brik if dats wot it takes to get this cuntry back up again to wher it belongs. I’ll burn evry library. I’ll punch any teacha dat stands in my way. I’ll do anyfink to protect are kids, are whyte kids. Am I a hero? Not for me to sey. I’m just Terry and I’m proud to be Britesh.

 

 

Sober

The last time I drank alcohol was 3 weeks ago today. I am 21 days sober. This is no milestone, no cause for celebration, no victory lap.  But for me, it’s huge. The longest I have gone on without a drink in my adult life, and a path I want to continue on – without a final destination in mind; without an estimated time of arrival. There will be no detours, no shortcuts. Going off-piste to get pissed is what I will avoid. I am navigating through this journey one day, one step at a time.

The last time I drank alcohol was at the Army and Navy Pub. England were playing woefully against Slovakia and the garden was packed to the rafters. Whilst kick off was at 5pm, I only planned to be there until 4pm, stopping for a quick pint after a lunch down the road with a friend who was visiting from Portugal. We stopped by for 1 or 2, just 1 or 2, as I intended to go to work from there slightly merry, slightly looser, and run the floor with service whereby we’d inevitably be extremely quiet that evening due to the big match and the heat wave keeping punters away.

One, maybe two beers. In, out. Then back on the graft, leading by example, fulfilling my self-imposed duties.

Sadly, as an alcoholic, things do not often pan that way. As an alcoholic, as someone who is prone to stress due to the nature of my job, who is prone to anxiety due to my upbringing and traumas, I often found myself spiralling out of control after the second pint when I am already feeling heightened negative emotions. That often means I become blackout drunk, where I lose all memory of the last 2-3 hours of the night, and wake up the next day miraculously wondering how the hell I even made it home in one piece? And then the self-loathing kicks in. I want to kick the shit out of myself. I want to crawl in a hole and have the ground swallow me up. I want to run, run anywhere, but run away. To switch my phone off and go AWOL. To message everyone and ask “Was I a dickhead last night?” but equally to avoid everyone because I am afraid of what they’ll reveal to me, about me. I want to die.

And there I am, having flashbacks of the night before. I am arguing with Jim, the landlord of the Army and Navy, because he won’t let in someone who is supposed to join us. Someone who I have never met before, by the way, but I take it personally because I am by this stage 5 Guinness deep. I keep pestering him, and like a broken record he is telling me “I said no more entries” and I see 5 people leave and say “LOOK! LOOK! They just left, surely you can let ONE more person in Jim? Eh? Jim? I thought we were pals? Jim??? Jim, why do you hate me so much? Come on Jim don’t be stubborn. JIM????!!!” And Jim finally snaps and shouts at me, full of rage “I SAID NO MORE ENTRIES AND THAT’S THAT – NOW LEAVE ME ALONE!”

Why am I arguing with Jim? Why am I drunk? Why am I not at work? What am I even doing?

All these thoughts mask my brain the next day. I fucked up, again. I went too far, again. How many times this year, Ferhat? How many more times? What’s the end goal here?

 

I am twelve. It’s Saturday and I head to work at Mangal II with my dad because it is the only way I get to see him and spend time with him. My parents aren’t divorced or estranged – it’s just that he works 7 days a week and always in the evenings, so I never get to see him except in the mornings before school where I kiss his forehead as he sleeps and I take the change out of his jean pockets so I can buy sweets. The restaurant has a small bureau downstairs back then, and mid-service, when no one notices me disappearing, I sneak into the devil’s lair and open the bottles of Baileys, Tia Maria, Gordon’s Gin and Smirnoff Ice, and take sips out of them all. I am twelve and I am drinking straight shots of alcohol in my father’s restaurant because… well, I don’t know why but I have this urge to. My dad drinks all the time and my uncles’ drink, and all our family get togethers are piled with grown-ups getting drunk and arguing and eventually fighting, and it’s all my tiny child self has ever been exposed to, so I figure I may as well give it a bash because that’s what every male role model does in my life. I drink it and it tastes like shit but the next week there I am again, back on the horse, taking shots and feeling a slight buzz, and I keep it all secret.

I figure, my alcoholism started there, at Mangal II. There are many more anecdotes, all negative, when I tie in getting drunk with my working life – the two intertwined like hell and fire. There’s the lock-ins. The afters. The mess. The time I was handcuffed and bundled in a police van. But also, there’s no need to overexpose myself any further. I am, or shall I say - I have been, reckless. I used to brush it off to mates and say “Yeah, my life’s been a bit wild, init? A bit rock n roll.” In hindsight, with maturity, I can categorically say that this is absurd. A completely stupid take. Embarrassing. There isn’t a single thing that is cool about getting drunk. More than anything, it’s sad. A chronic pattern of behaviour passed down to me as it was normalised to me as a child – often through the medium of the workplace (my family restaurant) as I saw my own dad in action, my own cousins who’d work there, all getting smashed. Subconsciously, I mirrored them, thinking that was the biproduct of working in hospitality. That chefs and waiters and restaurateurs all got fucked-up because it’s part of the culture.

It may yet be true.

But it doesn’t need to be my truth. Not anymore. My drinking had increased over the last 3 years. The blackouts more frequent. The regret and realisation of the consequences of my drinking more prevalent. The desire to stop, to change, to moderate it or something, anything, enhanced. But there was always an occasion – a friend’s restaurant invitation, a birthday, a favourite customer coming in and asking me to join them for a glass of wine, a trade tasting, a gift sent by a supplier. There was always a reason to keep drinking. There always will be. Now, I realise this acceptance is just a cop-out. I can’t avoid life, and whether I drink or not is not anyone else’s responsibility but my own. I can always find an excuse to drink and absolve myself of any accountability. Now, though, I see how that is a trap for me to revert to alcoholism.

 

I think about how I will be at the beach in Turkey in 3 week’s time, 35C intense heat as the sea washes over my feet. The shop next to the shore selling ice-cold Efes beers for £1, and how I’ll be thirsty and dying to quench that. And then remind I myself how tasty Lipton Ice Tea peach-flavour in a can is.

I think about my best friend’s wedding coming up in September and how I’ll be giving a speech as best man. And how, now, it will be with a sober voice – no shots or champagne to settle the nerves whilst I try and make 100 people laugh.

I think about the Mangal II book launch party we will hold in October with all my nearest and dearest present. How I’ll have to work the room, charm everyone and keep them entertained – all without my muse, my little pick-me-up, my old trustee alcohol to give me that edge. I will be raw-dogging it.

And I think, “You’ve got this”. Babysteps.

 

It wasn’t easy for me to write this latest newsletter, and it deviates a little from what a restaurant should be saying. But my descent into drinking started here. And the last time I drank, I was avoiding work. The cycle feels complete now, or more accurately, broken. And for that, I feel whole again.

 

The Prick

The Prick

Service is always a bit nerve-wracking, simmering and lurking around you as an intrusive, unstable feeling dipping in and out of your consciousness. Everything can be set up immaculately, the floor cleaned, glasses polished, and a busy looking schedule, yet the fear that a major cock-up can happen is always lingering.

That night, there was a heightened nervousness. After months of following on the socials, the odd messages here and there, and a little anticipation, we hooked the big fish, and he made his maiden Mangal II booking now that he was back in town. Tonight. A kingmaker in the building – dangling our hopes and dreams like the grapes of a Roman Emperor sitting upon a throne (or some other food scene from The Gladiator when Joaquin Phoenix is in his chambers having a feast with fruit – you know what I mean).

It's 8pm, half an hour later than he promised.

The prick walks in.

We don’t want a star, which is just as well because we’ll never get one. This feels a little bit “Yeah? Well, I didn’t fancy her anyway, mate.” Maybe there’s a 10% truth to that but honestly… nah. No thanks. A tyre company telling me whether my restaurant is elite or not? A bunch of secret diners coming in, all from money, judging a place with a 30-year heritage and comparing it to other spots with pristine tables, grossly expensive tasting menus, and a stuffy dining space where you’re made to feel like you’re stepping into a gallery/exhibition/laboratory?

Yeah, fuck that. I don’t want that customer base who travel from Michelin spot to Michelin spot, often some rich, insufferable nerd who doesn’t care about restaurants and the people that make them, but only want to validate their own vacuous check list. These people don’t smile. They are joyless. They are boring. They are devoid of personality and excitement and charisma and relatability. They are rich, empty vessels jumping from host body (in this case, restaurants) to host body, sucking their air dry with their stoic, lifeless souls. I don’t want these people in my restaurant.

But this prick, this prick works for an even more prestigious entity – for the sake of anonymity, I won’t say what that is. A man so connected that his Instagram is full of selfies with every A-lister chef you can think of, all of whom he captions along the lines of “…such a pleasure to meet my friend insert the biggest chef today at insert the biggest restaurant, so proud to see them go from strength-to-strength with their 3rd star” or some other insufferable sentiments along those lines.

The expectation was that this prick would come in and enjoy his meal, and that would lead to lucrative opportunities to host events and bring in private hires and, well, make us a little bit of money to give us some breathing space, for once.

A kingmaker, as I say,

Now, I am not angry. I used to be. I used to tweet all kinds of pent-up, angry bile in my mid 20s through the Mangal2 account. Unexpectedly, it exposed me to a little internet fame – which I never once felt comfortable with (to this day, when approached by people when I’m out and about because they recognise me from the gram or the odd YouTube videos, I always get a bit embarrassed and bashful). But yes, anger seemed to be my default temperament and nowadays, well, I just don’t give half a fuck about double the number of things I used to.

But thinking about this prick, this man who came to my establishment I have spent a lifetime honing and protecting and improving and fucking up and then improving again, the lack of respect he showed throughout his meal and the arrogance he brought with him, it makes me a little mad.

So, what went wrong? “What happened, Ferhat”, you ask? This man came in with a companion, and after the usual greetings and niceties, sat down and practically ordered the whole menu without even asking her what she wanted. I think she was quite desensitised to his behaviour, as she smiled and nodded throughout their time here. The food lands, dish by dish. An absurd amount for two individuals but who am I to judge this judge? He’s the expert, right? It’s just what very wealthy, connected people do. Order the whole thing, throwing the kitchen sink at their gut with no remorse for their bowels. You do you, king.

Every dish, and I mean, every dish, that he received, he took two bites and left about 80% untouched. Were the dishes particularly bad? No, absolutely they were not. We brought our A-game and were working towards the peak of our culinary prowess. For reference, later that year we were voted the 35th best in the UK at The National Restaurant Awards. He’d take a couple of bites whilst being glued to his two phones, switching from handset to handset, completely ignoring his guest, his servers as they brought food, his surroundings, his hosts. Like a Masterchef judge when they take a nibble. Like a royal and there’s a banquet of food and their majesty has a slice of roast meat and says “I’m stuffed” as the servants scurry to take a sea of food away in silent, composed haste.

A plate would arrive, we’d eagerly check his feedback, his gestures and movements from afar, and he’d barely touch it. And repeat. To what felt like eternity. His eyes still transfixed on his phone. He barely looks up, like he’s sucked into a digital vortex. After what felt like a lifetime, the meal ends, mercifully. And rather than silently pay and exit, when I’m stood over with the card reader so he can end this transaction of hell, he then unleashes a barrage of unsolicited opinions.

“Dish x was good”, “Dish y was great”, “Dish z shouldn’t be on the menu – take it off”, etc. Then it’s all about our décor, how it needs to change wholescale – as if we have a pot of gold waiting to implement all these changes (not that I want to anyway, I like how we look thank you very much). He then lists off all about himself – completely goes off grid, all about his meals, his travels, his influence, his connections, his life. This goes on for far too long, where I had to break his monologue mid-sentence and pretend someone, somewhere was calling me. I hated every second of our post-meal interaction. I just stood there, gawping, mouth aghast at this rude, obnoxious prick.

Did I tell him to “fuck off?” You know how you look back at moments of conflict and think “I should have said this, or that, that would have showed them”, but the reality is you’re too frozen by the shock of what you’re witnessing in the moment to actually react so you… say nothing. You snap out, and remember why you came over to his table in the first place and take the card payment, praying this experience ends. After paying he insists on taking a photo of you and your brother outside the front of the restaurant – it’s all part of the game for him. Photo with the Dirik brothers? Check. Story, upload post, whatever. Went there and tried it. Got the badge. Acted like an insufferable prick. End of.

And you know, there are plenty like him. I won’t dox the prick. Maybe this newsletter is all fabricated – let’s just believe that and avoid the guessing. But there are plenty of pricks who frequent restaurants without really understanding or respecting them. Who don’t care about independent businesses. Who preach sustainability and equality but travel the world from continent to continent just so they can sit through tasting menus and tell the world.

And equally, there are fine-diners and high-fliers and kingmakers who are very, very nice. Good people who genuinely pinch themselves with excitement every time they get to go eat somewhere decent. Who are friendly to staff and patrons and the table next to them and to their own guest sat across them. Who are kind people who want the best every time they step into a building and taste their expressions of culture and food meshed as one. Who only want to say positive things about their experiences because they want to see best in people and in eateries. Who don’t brag. Who build genuine friendships with chefs and sommeliers. Who care. Who fucking care.

Just, not this prick. And that’s fine because I’m surrounded by the most wonderful customers who totally get it and want the very best for Mangal II, and the team, and the area, and for Turkish-London culture to continue to thrive and express itself.

You might not eat our food, sir, but eat my words: You are a miserable, soulless man, and you are not my customer.

Up The Arse

 Mangal II won’t be around forever. Nothing lasts, and neither will we. I’ll be in my late-40’s one day, sell up and move to the coast to be away from everyone so I can write short stories no one will ever read. I’ll cash it all in and fuck off into the sunset. Sayonara, bitches! Adios! Güle güle!

Until then… hi! You know us, how we look from the front, inside. The sign and the setting. The décor and ambience. The food and the drinks. What you don’t see is the back, the ugly rear of Mangal II. The private alley you’re not exposed to unless you are indeed a delinquent loitering around the back streets of Dalston.

In this piece, I want to list the wildest things I’ve witnessed around the pit of my restaurant throughout the years. The contrast between Stoke Newington Road where the entrance to our home is located and the back of the building where we take out the rubbish, could only be explained in terms of the disparity of wealth in New Delhi/Rio de Janeiro with the contrast of skyscrapers overlooking slums. An exaggeration, naturally, but bear with me.

Firstly, there is no council rubbish collection services applicable to the back. Apparently, with it being private land, it is exempt from our business rates and waste disposal being put to any good use. Seeing as new builds have been erected in this strange no-man’s-land over the last 20 years, it has led to poor unsuspecting residents living in what I feel is quite possibly the worst patch of land in London. The trade-off with being able to say you live in Dalston with the harsh reality of not being able to dispose your domestic waste in any civilised capacity must be very humbling. What’s more humbling, is that often these people – amongst them doctors, solicitors, will dump their rubbish outside the perimeter of our garden. Heaps of black bin bags filled with food waste, tampons and nappies, piling up for days until we’re forced to have to call the local authorities to come and do something about it. Look, I get it. If I were conned into moving into a 1-bed flat in a hip part of town and only retrospectively realised no one will actually dispose the crap I want nothing to do with, despite paying stupendous amounts of council tax every month, I’d want to dump my shit somewhere, anywhere, too. Don’t hate the player, hate the game, and all that.

So, there’s that. The crap that inhabits the space. A wasteland. A source of irritation with no solution. A shit pie. The slum of all evils.

This is a weekly disturbance that I’ve strangely become immune to. It has stopped infuriating me – I’m now desensitized to it. Stockholm syndrome, perhaps. Held captive by a nonplussed council and private landlords. My frustrations drowned out by the stench of rubbish that overrides any sensitivities to the situation.

Then, there are the blowjobs.

The number of times I’ve left work, knackered, 2am, dying to go home and collapse to sleep, and I walk out the back and see an old man and an old woman going at it, against the wall, trousers down, knees bent, then the inevitable shock of seeing me and a quick jump up, belt latched, sudden flee – and the sheer look of horror and disgust on my face whilst I shout “OI, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!”. It’s happened more than 3 times, 3 times too many. Shacklewell Lane has long been a notorious red light district, something I’d witness from childhood as my dad would drive me home from working a Saturday shift with him as a 12 year old and see the sex workers patrolling the little bit of green in the middle of the road. That activity has on occasion spilled over to the back street of Mangal II, where someone’s uncle would be paying someone’s aunt some fee for something that’s (publicly) gross. It gets worse, I once saw a woman taking a shit outside the back against our fence. Literally squatting down shitting. No toilet paper, nothing. It still haunts me. In a pre-Covid world. A simpler time, a more innocent time, where you could squat + shit as you pleased, apparently.

I’ve seen numerous, countless fights at the back. The back is surrounded by THREE, yes, THREE, Kurdish illegal gambling dens. One road, 3 establishments filled with degenerate men who waste away their money until 6 in the morning every day. Naturally, this often leads to conflict between fellow gamblers who take exception to someone either cheating, or not paying up, or insulting them over the dealer’s table. It boils to a “Come outside, come on” type of schoolboy bravado where 2 middle-aged big-bellied Kurdish men try and aim a swing at one another. A lot of homoerotic grappling ensues (just kiss already, guys), followed by allies trying to break up their sexual tension by dragging them against the brick wall to muzzle them from further embarrassing themselves. It’s happened a lot, and as sad as it is because these men clearly have addictions which haven’t been dealt with, it’s always quite funny and pathetic.

And then there’s Musa.

Musa was a shoeshiner. He’d been around forever, from as far back as I can remember. Since early childhood up until my early 30s I remember him walking up and down Stoke Newington Road with his metal box of polish and shoe brushes, stopping every fellow Turk/Kurd to ask if they want their black leather shoes polished for a fiver. I knew Musa because my dad knew Musa. We’d give him food most nights as he’d swing by the end of a shift asking if we had any soup going. He’d receive his favourite free dinner of bulgur rice and lentil soup with bread and a plastic spoon in a carrier bag, which he’d proceed to eat around the back. Musa was relentless. Every time he’d see me walking up and down the road he’d hound me. He’d run into traffic just to cross the road to confront me, begging for a fiver. More often than not, out of sheer embarrassment that a man older than my dad was asking 20-year-old me for money, I’d rummage through my pocket for whatever change I had spare. Initially annoyed by this targeting, I grew empathetic towards him, and even, in time, struck up a cordial friendship with Musa. One thing I never did, though, was allow him to shine my shoes. That felt a step too far, too demeaning. It’s a job my own dad did as a poverty-stricken 7-year-old in inner-Anatolia. I couldn’t bear the idea of allowing anyone to shine or brush my trainers for me – even though after being handed money he’d insist on doing it, I’d always deny the opportunity.

Musa was homeless.

Musa, as far back as I could recall, was always homeless. Before we built a fenced-off garden around the back of Mangal II, it was a bit of a scrappy parking space. Uninhabited, vacant, and gross. And there’s where Musa eventually set up his home for a good long year. He settled there and we didn’t bother him and he didn’t bother us. It’s not our building, we’re not the owners, not my hill, not my battle. The landlord to our building, however, and for sake of anonymity let’s call her ‘Karen’, was apoplectic. Karen was furious. Not the most sympathetic creature by nature (the very same Karen who made us pay up all rent during Covid despite us receiving no income as we couldn’t trade, and despite us being her tenants for over 25 years), this situation was not something she could tolerate. She came to me begging for assistance to get rid of him. She called him many, many bad words. To be fair, Musa gave it back as good as he got. I simply refused to get involved. I preferred Musa over Karen. I trusted Musa. I liked Musa. Not my hill, not my battle. So, she got the council involved. It took a year, but eventually they got Musa to move – putting him in temporary accommodation in West London. When I found out, I was happy for Musa – to finally have a roof over his head. Musa, however, did not feel the same. Now he was enraged. “All my business is in Dalston – these motherfuckers have made my commute to work impossible.” I didn’t even consider this position, how seriously he took his shoeshining. I felt stupid, looking at things through a lens that Musa couldn’t understand. More important than a home was his ability to work, to function, to have a purpose.

Musa still made the trip to Dalston every day. Until he finally came back for good. He set up his final shop, his final home on the bus stop outside Beyond Retro in Stoke Newington Road. I saw him there at the end of the first lockdown. Sleeping with piles of rubbish, his left foot exposed with no shoe on, full of gangrene and rot. His skin purple. A crowd of people were gathered around him. He refused to speak to anyone. Someone was calling the ambulance, another the police. I pushed through the crowd and knelt down and spoke to him. He said “I don’t want to go to no fucking hospital”. I replied “Musa, you look very sick, please just go. Let them take care of you. Please.”

His final words to me were “Ferhat, let me just die here. I want to die here”.

He never got in that ambulance.

3 days later, Musa died.

And I guess, a small part of me and my connection to the back of the restaurant died there, too. That’s why I always look forward, never back. Nothing good comes out of the back. Just shit.

The Valentine’s Day Massacre

I’ve seen love in various forms here at Mangal II. I’ve seen elderly couples come here week after week, ordering the same dishes whilst they’d lock eyes, hold hands and share warm conversations with genuine affection and companionship. I’ve seen young couples highly-charged on stimulants, hands all over one another and having barely touched the food, on their second bottle of wine, and they disappear off to the toilet together wrongfully assuming nobody has noticed. We’ve had breakups, first dates, engagement and wedding parties, tears and tonnes of snogging. Surprisingly, zero public proposals by the way.

 

I remember a couple who would come in every month for a number of years. I must have been in my late teens/early twenties. The man looked like a hybrid of Austin Powers and Guy Pierce; the woman the lovechild of Dobbie from Peep Show and another face familiar to me but now feels like a fading memory. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, they’d sit across the ocakbaşı grill each time – this being “their spot”, and order copious amounts of chicken wings and chops and any other dish which didn’t require cutlery to navigate their way through. What would proceed for the next two hours would be pure hell. They’d take a bite, hands covered in meat fat and oils, and then make out. Bite, and make out. On loop, non-stop, until the biting became more carnivorous ,and the kissing and touching manic and painfully grotesque. It was as if the food was a prop, and they were really here to consume one another. I’d watch in horror, and each time it was like a car crash – you know it’s happening, and the visual effects are negatively impactful and traumatic but you’re too stunned to do anything about it. Do I intercept and pull each victim away from the collision (in this case these two freaks and their colliding of tongues and saliva and lamb juice)? Do I call the emergency services? Or do I simply stand in horror, frozen with fear, and pray someone, something, takes this harrowing sight away from my peripheral?

 

Luckily, I didn’t have to do anything. They eventually broke up - I know this because the woman turned up months after her final visit with Guy Powers with another guy, with a new haircut, requesting the same seat. Thankfully, her dining companion was less horny, or by the very least, more respectful, and they didn’t finger fuck the hell out of one another. It was to be her last visit.

 

It’s Valentine’s Day today. Every restaurant (including ours) will be full to the brim with couples. New ones, old ones, blind dates and maybe even a couple of friends supporting one another as they forge the fight through eternal singledom and loneliness. It’s a day of love and one full of grand gestures, high net spend, too much alcohol and the high probability of disappointment. It is a stupid, stupid day and one the industry revels in because it will boost their weekly take-in and drive the economy into overload for a brief moment. January, as we all know, sucks for most industries, not least hospitality. Dry January seems to have really caught wind this year, spilling over to Frigid February. The public appear to be on the brink of financial collapse and that has been reflected in our and our peers’ services as numbers drop, fewer waste money on alcohol with a high mark up, and food intake is reduced.

 

And now? A celebration of love and grandiose expressions of wanting an other and being wanted and monetising that in a public setting to maintain the status quo of proving your relationship is strong and everlasting. Look, we’ve all been there. I sure have. But this is such a stupid day. I can absolutely attest that the customer profile who dines at Mangal II on this day, year upon year, is not our usual one. I could not give a fuck about releasing this think piece today because the customer who walks into my establishment does not even read my newsletter, let alone care. They’re here because they saw one of our videos on YouTube or saw an image of our Tahini Tart on Instagram, or some other superficial reason and they’ve been hooked in. They’re here because they want to impress their date and check off a restaurant on their list. They’re here because they’re just like you and me and we all do the same, too. I am them.

 

There are restaurants I care about and restaurants I don’t care about, but I visit out of morbid curiosity and pressure by my friends and industry peers to do so. For example, I have now been to The Devonshire thrice, and I still think there’s something unremarkable about the whole experience but the next time I’m in Soho and I want a ludicrously thiccc Guinness which makes zero sense just how much ass (body) it has, how overpowering its notes of black coffee and cocoa beans are compared to the very best Guinness I’ve gulped, you know I’m headed there. Why? Because Top Jaw says so on my feed every fucking day as they interview chefs (and Rishi Sunak – lost a lot of brownie points for that one, boys) for their favourite pub, and because my mates and I talk about it and because I am an industry gimp ready to follow the trails of what’s in and what’s out.

 

I go to all these places and I own one of these places and that’s why I know myself and what I would rather be doing on Valentine’s Day (avoiding it – this has been the way my whole life, whether I am in a relationship or not), and I know a lot of my customers feel the same, so the ones who do come in tonight will mostly be of a different breed. There’ll be snappy and nervous and demanding and ask for a G&T without looking at the drinks list (we don’t have G&T) or a Prosecco (we don’t serve prosecco by the glass). They’ll ask about Action Bronson because they say the Munchies video, or ask if they can have chilli sauce with their mains and whether it comes with rice or salad (it doesn’t). Some won’t turn up. And you know what, the remaining 70% will be absolutely delightful guests, but the 30% will stick out and our usual ratio of ‘Wonderful to Awful’ is 99:1. So Valentine’s Day really does stick out as a crap time of year for service. The other being office Christmas party season where you get the occasional lout who has begrudgingly been invited by colleagues and does not know how to behave in restaurants but is a bit too familiar with our toilets.

 

I don’t mean to shit on everyone’s Valentine’s Day. I hope you all have a lovely dinner, stimulating conversation, and crucially, get laid. I just can’t stop thinking about that man with chicken marinade dripping off his forefingers with his hands up the rear of the woman’s jeans. And then I temporarily plead for early Alzheimer’s to delete this memory forever.

The Bore

Yawn.

Mangal II is not ‘The Bear’.

It’s a real business, with a real story, with two very real brothers (both of whom are alive, I must stress) who worked together to make the changes and improvements you see today. All backed by a strong team who are dedicated and committed.

We don’t throw pans. We don’t stab one another. We don’t get locked in the cold room. We don’t swear at each other. We don’t have a quirky handyman who fixes everything (well, we do have Jordan but he’s way more than that, he’s the restaurant manager). We don’t have a Richie, or a Sydney, or a Tina or a weird insidious old man who we owe money to. Carmy is a fictionalised character with sleep deprivations and an inability to function outside the realms of the kitchen. Michael was a drug addict hedonist who sadly committed suicide after racking up serious debt, but then cryptically hid cash in the kitchen. This is not our story. Sertac has a balanced, good life with a partner and a dog and a new restaurant opening up soon. Ferhat (again, must stress, who is very much alive) hates cocaine. If there is hidden cash, I want dibs.

The similarities with my brother going to Copenhagen and coming back, and Carmy doing the same, is familiar but also not too rare. Copenhagen has recently been at the forefront of all gastronomic development, so it is an all-too-common pilgrimage. And chefs returning home after their stint there is also a common migration seeing as very few professionals live there indefinitely. I alone could name 10 who have made that loop journey and I don’t even hang out with many chefs.

The number of mentions of my restaurant being similar to the ‘The Bear’, both in person and online via media agencies, is now becoming a thing. It was initially amusing, then bemusing, and now, irritating.

And that’s coming from a huge fan of the show. I love it. I love the backstory of each character, their growth and development and in some cases, digression. I love the way the kitchen and team are captured, the pressure cooker world of life and death between each service. I love how the show captures the lonely, emptiness one feels post-dramatic shift, and the quiet solace in each person’s commute to work. I love the awkwardness of navigating between being a god in the kitchen and a civilian once you step outside and face the real world. I love the relationship dynamics at play, the manic energy of the family meal, and the heightened tension it all ensues. As a divorced father, I cried 3 times during Richie’s episode in season 2, and had to take a long pause as he had a show-stealing scene with Olivia Colman. I needed a cigarette or two and some deep breaths before I dived back in.

But I am not Richie. I am not Michael. Sertac is not Carmy. And Jordan is not Fak. Jack is not Sydney. And Poppy is not Tina. My dad is not Uncle Jimmy, and neither is the annoying Kurdish mafia of Dalston who want handouts every year (which we refuse). My sister is not Sugar and my mum is not Jamie Lee fucking Curtis, though she is also tall and can be imposing now and then, I guess.

Look, ok, there are some loose similarities. But Mangal II is way, way more than that. It is, first and foremost, an immigrant’s tale from our father and mother. They came to London without any formal education and without the ability to speak any English. They lived in squats all over Hackney until the council granted them a home in Dalston. They stepped into a world so alien and came out the other side rock solid. Surviving in a city is tough enough, and if you’re a foreigner without a grasp of the language and any connection, quadruple that. Then double it. Our story is an immigrant’s story. Our success is the immigrant’s success. It’s not about a family torn apart by the tragic loss of life of one of the sons. It is about perseverance, a collective effort, and subsequent success. But we were successful and somewhat iconic pre-pandemic as a very well-respected kebab house, and we thankfully are again well-revered now with all the changes Sertac and I implemented together. We were never down and out, like in the show. We were never shut except when everywhere else was shut during the pandemic.

The comparisons are lazy, bemusing, and at worse, offensive. Initially, I could somewhat understand to a small degree why we were affiliated with the show in a general sense. But now it’s just repetitive nonsense.

Allow a wonderful, captivating show to be just that, a show. And let a real restaurant with real staff and real owners to exist as its own thing. Not everything has a layer of coincidence and not everything has to be affiliated with another. Things exist. Things are similar to other things, but they are not the same. This very recent and infuriating media fetishization of the restaurant industry, of the lifestyle, and also of chefs, is not particularly helpful to real individuals who have put in a lifetime’s work to hone a craft which in essence is aimed to feed and nourish people. I’m not saying the show does this – I feel the general message is one of dedication, loss, family and overcoming one’s demons. Mangal II’s message is one of immigration, survival, adaptation, and being a part of the rich tapestry of London’s dining culture.

Chicago is Chicago. London is London. Berzatto is Berzatto. Dirik is Dirik. The Bear is The Bear. Mangal II is Mangal II.

And, as far as I can recall, the show has zero scenes with giant lumps of charcoal, ocakbasi cooking, wobbly tables and low-intervention wines.

Anyway, I can’t wait for season 3. Will Carmy learn to love and accept being loved (and stop being a dick)? Will Sydney stop being condescending? Will Richie stay on the career growth straight and narrow? Will Marcus whip us up a delicious doughnut? Will Uncle Jimmy make up his mind whether he is an Italian-American gangster or a Polish-American one? Will Fak shower? Will Pete (Sugar’s husband) put on the marigolds and do a hero shift when Ebraheim storms off in anger because he has flashbacks of the Somalian civil war? Will the walls collapse again, and is there more hidden cash? It’s entertaining, tv gold, and I can’t get enough of it. But just, please, accept it for what it is: A show.

The Bore of The Bear (comparisons).

Auntie

Auntie. I see you, with your shopping trolley bag and your bright dyed hair. You breeze past the restaurant from across the road, not glancing in our direction whilst you storm with tunnel vision as you race it home for dinner. You’re comfortably in your 70’s but have the energy of a teenager, looking after your grandkids and great-grandkids whilst the parents work their 9-5s. A constant source of reliability for your family; a rock; its very foundation. 

You’ve been in Dalston for over 50 years – I know, because you told me. You said you bought your 3-story house back then for £6000 and paid your monthly mortgage cost £20. The numbers made my head spin. £6000 for a house worth over £1million today? Fair play, Queen. You told me a lot, do you remember? We used to speak every night, as you’d pop into Mangal 2 and grab your takeaway. You had a special deal, one which you charmed your way into coercing, slowly, bit by bit, with your friendly demeanour and warm spirit. Eventually, it became ridiculous. The final version of which, as you pushed the envelope further and further with a new free addition every now and then to your nightly order was the following:

 - A total outlay of £3 for half a Lamb Shish in the thicker pide bread (which cost us more from the bakery) with onions, green peppers and 3 slices of tomatoes 

- Free lemon wedges in a separate container

 - A tea whilst you waited for it to cook

 - 2 free packaged wet wipes;

 - And wait for it, this was the killer blow, one slice of Baklava.

If there was any mishap, any deviation, any drop in quality you’d storm in the next day and shout at the chef and I’d give you a refund. But anyway, this final deal with the added dessert drove a wedge between us. I was too polite to say “No”, and you were too opportunistic to stop testing my kindness. So, rather than deal with the problem like a grown up, I became rude and non-communicative as you returned every evening to place your bets. To my deep shame. This only lasted a week, where you’d try and strike a conversation and I pretended I was busy. I started “forgetting” your tea. I wouldn’t ask if you wanted the Baklava (though you would remind me to put it in; you never failed to remind me). I ended up feeling shit, so eventually, after a couple of weeks, I said “Auntie, this £3 deal is killing us. We need to raise it to £4.” I’ve felt less tense saying this than breaking up with someone. Who would flinch first? You silently understood the gig was up. Accept my terms, pay an extra £1 every evening or lose my friendship. Thankfully, in this wild game of Russian Roulette, you caved. £4 a night it was, then. Sure, my business was losing money every time you walked in and placed an order, but I enacted some form of damage limitation.

We were back on, you and I. As close as ever before now the payment situation had been resolved. I tried to make up for lost time by overcompensating – every time you brought in your grandson with you, and look, I’m a dad, I feel like I can get along with almost all kids, I pretended to like the little fella and say things like “What a wonderful boy he is!” about this 6-year-old who I found infuriatingly annoying. He wasn’t a bad kid, but just didn’t sit still in our busy restaurant and always asked for free sweets (much like his nanna, I say). Couldn’t stand the little runt, but I just overegged how lovely and welcome he was just to get back on auntie’s good side.

Why this relationship became so important to me, I can’t say. I’ve never had a grandmother as both my parents lost their respective parent at a young age, and in a way I found your daily presence in my life comforting and sort of maternal. I was happy that you took an interest in my well-being. You’d ask questions about my then wife, and my son and family life, and it made me feel loved. You were close to my cousin who had worked in the restaurant many years ago, the same cousin I was close to when I was growing up, the very cousin who died aged 30 of lymphoma cancer and shocked both you and I to our very core. Your past, my past, our pain entwined. We spoke about him often. It was healing.

Then, you stopped coming in. It lasted about 10 days and I became incredibly worried. Did something happen? Did I upset you? Did we fuck up your order one too many times? Did the worst happen and… you know? Surely not? You’re so healthy and active. Surely, surely not?

In a way, when you eventually came in after a leave of absence, broken, frail, with the life of you exhausted out of every pore, the news you shared was far worse: Your daughter had died, suddenly. The mother to the little boy you’d come in with. After telling me the tragic news, a few days later you came in with your grandson and I broke down. I hugged him, tears streaming down my face as I offered him any sweet, any can of drink he desired, on us. The boy was dealing with the shock and trauma his own way. 6-years-old, not able to articulate his loss in an adult form, jumping around as much as ever, not sitting still, naughty and appearing oblivious to this most painful of losses. My son at the time was 3 years younger, my ex-wife was pregnant with our second, it hit me hard as I tried to imagine how he would feel in that situation. I was staring at this poor boy with intense feelings of sadness and guilt for not warming to him from the get-go.

But seeing you every day, and seeing the young lad once/twice a week when he’d stay with you as his father worked and tried to retain some sort of order in his broken life, I saw, slowly, very gradually, the colour return to your eyes, the light of your spirit slowly, very deliberately emerging. You were returning back to yourself, week by week, shouting at chefs and drinking your Turkish tea with 2 and a half sugars, and picking the best looking piece of baklava from the glass display. Auntie was back. We were back on. Me and my surrogate nan, chatting away for 10 minutes every night as the Shish cooked and the hordes of produce bungled its way into your plastic carrier bag. £4 to feast like royalty, and in exchange I had my missing family jigsaw back.

Then we changed the whole restaurant up. The pandemic hit and the Mangal 2 you knew disintegrated bit by bit. You couldn’t shout at the chefs anymore because they were all young and English, not the old Bulgarian-Turks you felt comfortable belittling. The salad was not the usual you’d find here before, and team became frustrated as they had to custom make your order, and only yours. The outsourced Baklava was gone. No more wet wipes. There were no lemons on display for you to pinch. The wrap was the only common denominator from the past, and eventually we got rid of that, too. We got rid of the Shish, and by proxy, you. You and the Shish were the last remnants of the past, the last reminders of days of generosity galore, of loss-making, of fizzy cans sold here, of tea being brewed and takeaways being sold. We got rid of the lot.

And yeah, sometimes I miss you. Sometimes I remember us sitting down and talking, and sometimes crying, and sometimes laughing, and sometimes sharing an icy silence as you drove me to the point of insanity with your frugal ways. And maybe that’s what having a grandmother is like? I don’t know. I assume it’s comforting, but also annoying and a little bit exhausting, but also unconditionally loving. Either way, I love you, Auntie. And though you probably hate us for what we’ve done (saved our business and our futures and taken pride in our work and grown), I will always admire you from afar. And when I’m old, I want to be half the unrelenting bastard you are and scare the living shit out of grown men with big bellies. You rock, Auntie. And I’m proud you adopted me for a brief moment in my life x

Reviews

This newsletter is brought to you by Mangal 2 Restaurant - the one with the 4.1 Google rating. No, that’s not a typo. Four point one. On a scale of 1 to 5, the average “customer” would grade us a meagre 4.1. In our dizzying heyday a few years back it was a triumphant 4.3 – a gloriously underwhelming score at least 0.1 below our then local kebab house competitors. I’d be so wrapped up in our Google rating back then that I’d personally respond to every 1* review as if it were an attack. I genuinely had sleepless nights angered and stressing over what ‘moonypig02’ wrote online because the food wait times were not up to her expectancy. Each bad rating was like a crass “RIP Grandad x” tattoo on my neck, for the world to judge and laugh at. A blemish on my record. A relegation. A breakup. An embarrassing public fart. A small dagger in my heart.

I’d beg and borrow friends’ and familiar customers’ goodwill to lure them into leaving us a 5* every time we received a 1* to redress a balance and right some wrongs, to restore the cosmic ying yang of the Googleverse and keep our average intact. One thing I never resorted to do was pay for positive reviews – principally, and perhaps more out of pride, I just couldn’t venture down that indignant path, though begging my then good-for-nothing friends who’d wine and dine for free to do the bare minimum and leave a positive online stamp was degrading enough. 

So, there we were, 4.3 layers into the depths of online hell when we restored the restaurant during the pandemic and relaunched with the changes which gradually evolved into the Mangal 2 you see today. Anticipating a steady climb back up the table to a respectable 4.5, 4.6 if I was feeling a bit frisky, with all these exciting changes and natural wines and exposure and good press and hospo industry approval and whatnot, what transpired has been a plunge down the canyon, freefalling to our current crashlanding of 4.1.

Now, a little introspection is key here. Why, oh why, when we were labelled the 35th best restaurant in the UK as recently as last year, were reviews online slipping away under us. It seems the more acclaim and hype we received, the stronger the backlash online and ferocity of disgruntlement customers were willing to express to counter that. Our customer profile for the most part changed, too. Gone were many of the locals and regulars. In were food tourists, creatives, big celeb names, ITK food people and, essentially, ‘the cool crowd’. Now, if I know anything, it's that anyone who falls under the category above does not bother writing Google reviews. If they like/love something, they’ll either a) story/post about it online and crucially b) tell their mates. It’s why we’re busy every night and full to the brim, and why when I ask customers how their experience went, I receive overwhelmingly positive feedback. 

Truth be told, I don’t have a single friend or even acquaintance who reviews places on Google, or god forbid, Trip Advisor (the latter would see them cancelled, in my eyes). For me, and I am certainly biased, I often find those most likely to review a place are reactionary types, who are prone to a sense of injustice. A common theme to our negative reviews are the following reasons which we cannot help or change too greatly:

  1. “It’s not Turkish enough” – Buddy, well perhaps that’s because we (Sertac and I) are not Turkish enough. We were born and raised in London. We do not advertise being a traditional Turkish restaurant. We are Turkish-leaning, Dirik family home cooking influenced. There’s a big difference.

  2. “The prices are too expensive” – Have you done a grocery shop lately? Do you know how much local, organic, seasonal produce costs? Do you understand the concept of charging things at a profit to ensure sustainability and at the bare minimum, survival? Or are you plain stupid? Also, back to that word again, ‘Google’. Did you not Google the menu before arriving? What did you expect?

  3. “The portions were too small” – This one, I emphasise with. It’s not your fault. Every Turkish and Turkish-influenced restaurant is ploughing on the portions and sending freebies left, right and centre. The culture is one of abundance or overfilling. So, unfairly I would add, certain customers arrive with the prejudice that there will be mountains of food served here. That won’t happen. We could put more things on a plate for the sake of it, but it would take away the sincerity of what we do and what we believe in. Also, if we were defined as a Modern European restaurant, we wouldn’t be beaten with this portion-sized stick all the time. It’s all about perceptions and historic Turkish generosity. No one is to blame, but it’s time to shift this tedious narrative.

  4. “Service was poor” – Ok, this is on us. It happens from time to time and I am just as culpable of being the offending party as any of my Front of House team. We all have off days when we’re distracted by life outside of work, or feeling a bit sick, or plainly just not down to clown and pretend we’re ok to put up with serving impatient people. I’m sorry. It’s not professional and it should never be ok. But we’re humans, at the end of the day. We move.

  5. “Food arrived late” – This just happens. Things don’t always move like clockwork. Trains are delayed. Flights are cancelled. Your Cull Yaw Loin took 10 minutes later to cook because there was a backlog of orders and there’s only so much you can cook on an ocakbasi grill in one go. Relax, sip some wine, and try and have a conversation with the person sat across you in the meanwhile.

  6. “We couldn’t get a table” – BOOK ONLINE. You are not entitled to one just because you stumbled upon our restaurant whilst visiting Dalston.

I can take it all, all the difficulties, if there’s a level playing field and restaurants are also allowed to review customers. Imagine, the next time you Google someone’s name, a rating instantly pops up. It’s very Black Mirror, but if you can dish it out, you better be able to take it. You review us, we review your conduct as a guest. If you’re a nice, normal, respectful person, surely there isn’t a thing to worry about here… Ok, so no, I jest. Reviewing people is my idea of hell. But there should be a platform so restaurants can vet customers through booking platforms, so if someone books through, say Resy, we can see their customer profile and see how they treated restaurant staff and what their vibe was. It can be private and kept in-house for restaurants who have access to these booking platforms. It would also deter people from behaving like dicks in restaurants.

Anyway, long story short: If you’ve dined here, enjoyed it, and are too cool to leave us a nice review, maybe just once break out of that mindset and say something nice about us online. Or don’t. Who fucking cares? I probably wouldn’t, if I were you. I’d just tell all my mates and come back again and again, and champion you through my private Instagram account of close friends. 4.3. 4.1. Maybe 3.9 this time next year. Whatever. You bite that sourdough pide with kaymak, have a sip of incredible wine, in a relaxed atmosphere with friendly service and a good energy about the place, and you tell me we’re average. And I’ll tell you you’re deluded.

Love: Kebabs, Hate: Racism

Love: Kebabs

Hate: Racism

 

All of the above statements are true. They’re as true today as they were when I coined the phrase 7 years ago or whenever the hell it was, on a whim as a @mangal2 Tweet. I cannot remember the exact moment where I was or what I was doing as the “inspiration” came to me,             but I can place a high bet it was one of the usual scenarios:

1)    I was on the bus

2)    I was on the tube

3)    I wasn’t able to sleep and lost deep in my thoughts at 4am and it hit me, and when the idea came to me, I chuckled, saved in on my iPhone notes and pressed send at 10am

4)    The most common occurrence: Sat on the toilet.

 

I wanted to tweet something punchy and quick and funny and relevant. Football’s “Love Football, Hate Racism” was in vogue and I thought “Ah, so basic but true. Now, what do I love more than football itself and can relay back in a @mangal2 voice because I seek validation online from strangers 24/7 in a desperate attempt to be accepted as funny and irreverent? Kebabs, that’s what.” A so, as the story goes, the tweet was sent.

It got a little traction. There were anti-police/racism protests in Brixton a few years back and someone sprayed these eternal words on a wall and my devoted followers highlighted it to me. I was a bit spooked. Woah, ok, my silly words have found a physical home, I thought. A sign of things to come, but pretty exciting at the time as I pushed boundaries with what a restaurant should and shouldn’t tweet.

Anyway, I shut the Twitter down as my restaurant started doing well in real life, because I had no need to vent or talk my own establishment down anymore. I wasn’t stuck running a kebab house (stuck is a stupid word – but that’s how I truly felt for years as I juggled running a business on my own whilst having a young family in my mid to late 20’s and early 30s, a situation that’s rare in modern London life and quite isolating, to be honest). I finally had a restaurant, with my brother, which aligned with our vision moving forward, and the Twitter account felt a bit unnecessary to maintain as I felt it would discredit all the wonderful, brave changes we were implementing. And also, I mean, hindsight is 20/20 and all that, but fuck Twitter. Owned by Elon Musk. Spreader of awful, false information which affects elections and social perceptions, bot-infested and unregulated. No, thanks!

I shut the Twitter down and I removed the profile, so all historical tweets were gone. I wanted a clean break. Like an art piece that I destroyed, a novel I disowned, a limb removed, I moved on.

I moved on but I didn’t want my words to be stolen, and as we were looking into making some Mangal 2 merch to get us through difficult lockdown times by producing t-shirts and tote bags, I pitched putting those words into t-shirt form and just test how it would do. Sertac, coming from a graphic design past, was more than happy to create the look and typography, and we put the piece into motion. We found a t-shirt producing company. An Instagram post ensued and the reaction blew us away. We were unprepared for the level of interest it would spike and soon, before we knew it, before working with a proper distributor (we now, mercifully, work with Everpress), we were inundated with orders from around the world – Singapore, Europe, Australia, so much to North America, you name it – everywhere), which we’d send via a Post Office service (by we, I mean our old hero front of house Henry Catt would be sent to run that errand – god bless him and his patience). It was an absolute comedy operation where one day we’d be dealing with someone from New Zealand asking where their t-shirt is, and the next a weird third party t-shirt printer we didn’t know in Devon would be sending us lowkey racist-tone emails because he didn’t want to work with us – the irony, the conflict he must have felt with each t-shirt he screen-printed! RIP, king!

Anyway, Sertac soon brought Everpress to the table through his deep pocket of contacts and our work was way more streamlined and manageable. The first t-shirt was white with black letters; we added a black t-shirt with white letters soon after and the public went bananas. The first year of selling these t-shirts really got us out of a financial blackhole. Years of tweets finally paid some monetary benefit and I felt some vindication for all my lost adolescence venting away online whilst a lot of my contemporaries who had similar accounts (I’m looking at you, The Dolphin Pub) were made social media partners at tech start ups and raking it in, whilst I was managing a restaurant with endless debt and problematic staff and quite a few ungrateful customers who’d flip out when their free humus didn’t arrive on time.

And then the worst happened.

Given the t-shirts’ popularity and exposure, a lot of, let’s call them fuckheads, started copying our message and printing it through their own channels. We’d see an increasing number of sites making our merch without permission, charging less, and not crediting us nor Everpress. Were we annoyed? Yes, we were. We still are. It’s theft and sadly that’s the way the world works. Our sales have plummeted. Dropped by 9/10s some months. For every bit of excitement when we see Peggy Gou wearing our t-shirt, or it’s on Great British Meme’s (or whatever the hell it’s called – I cannot emphasise how OFF Twitter I am – and sadly, no credit to us) twitter handle again with over 5k likes, we feel that extra bit of annoyance all that traction is being fed elsewhere, swallowed up by fraudulent wankers stealing our ideas and our creativity and endeavours. Festival season is in full swing and for every Love: Kebabs, Hate: Racism t-shirt we see being shared on the gram and going viral, we’re cheated out of our earning that extra bit more, and bottom-feeders are only benefitting. And the biggest shame is, it prevents us contributing more to anti-racism charities like SARI – Stand Against Racism & Inequality, which we always do by giving 15% of all profits to.

So please, do the right thing and order through Everpress. Love: Mangal 2, Hate: Injustice.

Ya Punk

“So, you want to open a restaurant, do you, ya punk?
Well, I’ve got some stories for you, kid. *Spits out tobacco he was chewing*
Where do you get off, jerk, thinking you could do something like that? Who’s funding ya? Where’s the cheese, the moolah, the smackeroons, the paper coming from, asshole? Who’s got your back? Is it Jimmy Snakefingers? Did you rob a bank, rascal? Mommy and daddy rich, are they? Whose shit did you have to shovel and for how long until you came up with that kind of money, jackoff?!
*Downs whatever is remaining of his bourbon, slams the glass back down and signals for 2 more to the barlady in one swift hand movement*

<<Exit scene>>

Ok, so THAT was a poorly depicted moment in American cinema no one ever needs to see (or read). But the message remains the same: Provided you are in the most privileged of positions and find yourself with a war chest of money/investment/or in my case, passed onto you with a world of debt and issues, why would you want to run a restaurant? What’s in it for you?

What I sadly find is that those who can, often open a restaurant, right? Let’s start there. Celebrities reveal they own 1/3 of an awful fusion joint in downtown Hollywood when conducting their strange Vanity Fair interviews. Footballers invest in tacky, glitzy spots where the food is an afterthought, and the concept is a mystery. Wealthy financiers plunge money into smallish venture capitalists who buy up the high street with chain restaurants, hoping a larger venture capitalist swallows up their portfolio and they make an easy profit. It’s all a bit depressing and rarely for the virtue of providing great food, commitment to the cause (to the end), have a bit of a character and relatable backstory, and be an integral part of a community. It’s a business. A reason to show off. A place to host VIPs. Staff revolving in and out the door through agencies, and chefs switching up the menu frequently because nothing lands. A restaurant for a restaurant’s sake. These exist. And more often than not, they suck.

Outside of this alien world are dedicated, hard-working restaurant owners who face a multitude of challenges and for whom this is their livelihood. No exit plans and no quick fixes. Just swimming against the tide of diarrhoea whilst the council drop a piano on your head. The government handing you a measly £3000 when they shut down the country for a third time because they were so reluctant to do so the first time when the rest of the world showed some sense – even though your weekly losses amount to double that amount. £3000 is a very significant amount of money for an individual; for a restaurant in London, it’s a joke.

The fun does not end there. It’s not all monetary.

It’s knowing you can’t switch off on your days off because something always goes wrong. It can be the plumbing acting up and the sinks are blocked after customers stuffed lord knows what down your toilets; A supplier not providing a vital ingredient which ruins your menu for the evening; Your restaurant shutters getting stuck and chefs not being able to access the building on a Saturday when it’s your busiest day of the week, causing you to open 2 hours later than planned; The extraction fan’s fuse blowing up so you cannot grill all night;These issues alone are things my brother, our operations manager, and I have had to contend with in the last 6 months.


Staff you spend months training, investing in, befriending and supporting abruptly leave, with very short notice. This one is fine, actually. Everyone leaves. Everyone. It’s just you in the end, and that’s something you must accept from day one. A bit morbid but also quite synonymous with life and death and those who enter and leave our lives and the final cull at the very end being a very solitary act. That’s fine. Go. Thank you for the memories and laughs and moments, anyway (sincerely).

<<New scene, somewhere in Dalston. A restaurant, Turkish-ish. Let’s call in “Mangal x”. Wait, that’s too obvious. How about “M2”. Yes, that’s better>>

“Still here, are ya, ya punk? What are you, some kinda goddamn masochist? You’re barely breaking even, your Google reviews are an abomination, and I see your eyes, you sad sack of crap. You’re on the edge of a breakdown, ain’t ya? Shit, I bet if I got off my stool rightabout now and flicked your snot-infested nose with my middle finger, that’d just about do it, am I right? That’d be the final straw to send you over. Ha! You’d even be relieved, wouldn’t ya? It would be a merciful act by the high and mighty, one last straw for your hairy-ass camel’s back. Well, I tells ya what, kid. I’m not gonna do that. Ya hear me? I’m not. You know why? You wanna know? Coz you try, kid. You try. Heck, the whole team, they all try. Some try harder than you, when you’re down feelin’ sorry for own your sad-ass and they’re pickin’ up the slack. And those customers? The one’s you’re feedin’ every night, who keep returnin’, saying “It’s the best meal they’ve had this year”. What you’re doin’, what your brother is cookin’, and your crew are servin’, folks seem to like it. They keep comin’ back, don’t they? You see ‘em comin’ back, don’t ya, kid? Now tell me, why in the goddamn hell would they be comin’ back? This ain’t church! They don’t need to be there, spending their last crumb on gruel that turns to shit in 6 hours. They’re there because it’s GOOD. You hear that? It’s GOOD. You’re doing GOOD, ya punk. That’s as good as it gets. Take it. Deal with the other problems like all business owners. Everyone has problems. Shit, you think those assholes in their shiny offices and their pearly gates and their savings accounts and perfect skin, they don’t get problems? Course they do. We all do. Here’s you *thumb and forefinger barely merge to show the smallest gap* and here’s the world *arms stretched out wide*. Look at me, yappin’ away. Yappin’ away whilst you got all of them bottles of natural wines in that fridge of yours. Pour me another glass of, whaddya call it, ORANGE wine?! Ha! Orange. Now that’s some fancy moonshine if I ever saw some. And throw in a Tahini tart with those zig- zag lightning bolt cream thing on top you punks do. Go on. Because it’s good. And it’s all worth it, when it’s good.”

<<Exit scene (for the last time, I promise)>>

He’s right, you know? That crazy old bastard who I just imagined up, having that conversation with me somewhere in America, followed by a late night lock-in at Mangal 2. He’s right. I am an “asshole”. I do feel sorry for myself when the weight of running a restaurant feels overbearing and crushing. And I do have something wonderful that people resonate with that is worth fighting for, improving, tweaking, loving, obsessing, prioritising. I am lucky. I need to be more grateful for that. And I will try to be. Because once it’s gone, it’s gone. And then I really would have something to feel sorry about.