You’ve heard by now, yes, we wrote a book. Spent all of 2023 working on it – my brother Sertaç with all the recipes, directing the visual aspect too, with Justin de Souza as photographer, plus his anecdotes of how he became a chef, his influences, and his vision. It’s not my place to write on his behalf and his processes that allowed this book to form – I can just say it was very intensive for him, a lot of effort to produce a wonderful encyclopaedic amalgamation of recipes past and present. 60 in total – that’s no joke. I think he (and my dad as he sees his recipes come to life in book form) can truly be proud of the output as these dishes are transformed onto print. I know I am.
I did the storytelling. Essays about Mangal II, its history and my role within in. Plus, my own ethos on service and hospitality. It took me a whole year to compose these 10 pieces, plus the interview I conducted with my dad. No major spoilers, but what birthed from these is raw emotion, placenta and all. Nothing sugar-coated, glamourised or falsely represented. I had to dig deep into a realm my demons tried to supress. Confronting my own experiences, my own feelings, was very intrusive and put me in a very vulnerable position, especially as someone who views himself as a private individual who leans more towards introvert than extrovert. I also have an aversion to attention – I’d sooner be a recluse than have my face planted in newspapers or on TV. But that seems exactly what will be happening in the following months this year as we promote the book.
Stepping out of my comfort zone is a necessary evil when I signed a book deal. You can’t JD Salinger-it in this day and age. Creating the body of work is one thing; shouting through the hilltops of mass media, podcasts, literary events, and magazines interviews is an altogether separate beast. One Sertaç and I will need to tackle whilst balancing real-life responsibilities. It’s a territory I have dipped my toes in when the restaurant first received an avalanche of attention post-lockdown, but one I never fully plunged in. Now there will be an ocean of noise and media obligations I will have to soak myself in until the end of 2024. 3, 2, 1, bombs away as I deep dive into this murky world of repetitive questioning and overexposure. I’m not complaining, it is what it is. But it seems unlikely that I will be embracing it, truth be told.
And I guess the part of me that is dreading it a little is because I will be taken back to 2023 with each line of questioning.
2023 was not a fun year. 0/10 do not recommend at all. First, our operations manager left, which meant I had to take over most of his duties whilst working services, running a business, and being a father. His departure was the right call for all-involved as his role became redundant after we implemented the changes necessary to make our business more operational, but it still added substantially to my hectic life/workload.
Then, more pivotal, my brother announced he was leaving. I won’t go over this again as I have written about it in previous newsletters. Essentially, it made me the sole individual directing Mangal II. I was alone with every decision, every risk was mine alone, and every challenge I had to deal with without a partner. I have a supremely dedicated team around me, which made it easier and less isolating. But at the end of the day, it will be myself who shoulders the responsibility. This realisation was a hard pill to swallow and made me fearful about failure. But it’s one of those situations where you sink or swim, and despite the high tide I paddle. I keep paddling. And there’s the coast, I see it today. No longer do I feel lost at sea – but 2023, for a while, I did.
2023 also brought a lot of changes in my personal life – which I won’t indulge in too forensically. But essentially, I had to move back to my childhood home – albeit, temporarily, whilst I was awaiting my flat in Chingford to be vacated. This took 6 long months. For 6 months I was living at my parent’s home, at age 34, divorced dad of two, running a business alone, and single for the first time in 11 years. Unsurprisingly, this realisation didn’t do my self-esteem any world of good. I felt like a bit of a failure whenever I thought about it (which I did, constantly), like I’d lost everything and reverted to square one – the old family home. I drank a lot. I went out a lot. I was a loose cannon, and all because I didn’t want to sit at home thinking about where I was and how it came to this. Throughout this painful, hedonistic era in my life, I had a book to write and a restaurant to run. And more importantly, I had to keep it together as a parent – a role I place more importance to than everything else combined.
Writing a book in this mindset was cathartic. Through the torment, the sadness, formed words and sentences that I read back on with awe and wonder. I think this book is beautiful. I think I wrote my best work, and I feel the recipes by Sertaç and the photos by Justin are immaculate. Again, I don’t want to reveal too much but I can say that this is not your typical cookbook. It is a table-book to be read and digested, aided by outstanding dishes to replicate at home and a visual feast of ocakbaşı-fired plates to salivate over.
This may be the only book I ever write, and throughout the process I asked myself “What do I want Zeki & Juno (my children) to see when they’re older and they pick it up to read? How much of myself, my upbringing, my journey do I want to highlight – the very highs and depths of lows?” The answer was “All of it”. No stone unturned. The brutal truth, warts and all. So, I went all in. Throughout multiple productive discussions with Michelle Meade, a freelance publishing consultant working with Phaidon, she encouraged me to pursue this path of unadulterated emotion and feeling into words. I know this showcases huge chunks of my life that I have kept hidden from the public, like my childhood health-related traumas, but without telling my story I am doing Mangal II a disservice. And I live and breathe service.
So, here we are. A book. An actual book we done did. We done did it good. Two brothers from a working-class family, where neither parent went to secondary school, produced together. The sons of immigrants, writing a hardcover book with the very best arts and food publisher in the world. I’m not even trying to show-off when writing this – putting these facts into words right now feels surreal. Until I physically hold the thing when finally available, it all still will feel like a fever dream. But it’s real. It’s here in October. And it’s my proudest work to date. Through the darkest hour, and loneliest, most self-reflective time in my life, blossomed prose that I am besotted with pride over. And today, today I’m 35, in my own grown-up home, in my happiest, calmest, most balanced state. I am loved and I love in return. I have my job, my wonderful team, my own sense of belonging in my own restaurant, which in recent history I struggled to feel. I have a great relationship with my brother, and I am the best parent I am capable of being to my children.
And we have a book. We done wrote a book – a modern classic, if I do say so myself.