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.

An Ode To Lamb

By Ferhat Dirik

An Ode to Lamb

 

As I woke up in the west of Ireland, visiting the edge of Europe where the Atlantic shows no let up in wind, cold crisp air and beauty, making my way down the open glass corridors of my partner’s parent’s home and finding a comfy chair, I peered outside and saw lamb frolicking boundlessly across green pastures. Spring born, tenderly young, too young to visit an abattoir in these parts of the world. I quipped “If my dad was here, he’d be lighting up a barbie and showing no remorse”, which brought some laughs but also held true. The man would absolutely delight in grilling these babies and proudly reference their tender textures (of course they’re tender: How many protein-shake downing babies do you know with tough muscles and heavy limbs?) and soft meats. And he would have been correct, because I have tasted first hand on many an occasion a young, heartbreakingly young lamb grilled, or slow cooked over the oven, or raw in the form of a Kurdish tartare with pepper paste, onions and a world of chilli. And that was all before I hit the age of 7. Never did we, my siblings and I, question the nature of the animal we’d be consuming as we’d be fed meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner on most days and days especially when our dad was home. He’d often say “If there isn’t meat in the meal, I don’t count it a worthy dinner” and it would be true – or at least, his truth. This wild idea became indoctrinated in my own impressionable brain for many years after, way into my mid 20s, where I’d find myself consuming insane amounts of lamb on a daily basis. My justification (at the time)? I was running a very good kebab restaurant and it was all too delicious not to enjoy. I recognised my privileges and I indulged in them, day after day, night after night (I still secretly yearn for my midnight Mangal 2 feasts with lamb sweetbreads, lamb ribs, ezme salad, pide soaked in lamb fat and a dark, deep glass of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo). I devoured animal after animal, stockpiling enough bodies on my hit count to populate a microstate.


Then, something emerged in me. Something I repressed. Something I had shut down as I tweeted silly anti-vegan slogans to the masses and waged war on Nando’s for being chicken-led (and a bit crap). Something I knew to be true, but which I constantly drowned out at a vague attempt to look cool and appear nonchalant towards life and nature; a little emo me acting like I didn’t give a shit. My truth bolstered through the ranks of denial: I love animals. I love nature. I love sheep. I love lamb. Lamb are so fucking cute. Look at them, all frail and curly. Look at the stupid, idiotic smile they all carry. Stupid lamb, why are you smiling? Why am I smiling? Lamb, stop it. Stop. Ok, ok wait, let me just… ok now I’m stroking your stupid smiling head and you’re letting out a “Baaaaaaaaah”. Who says “Baaaaaah?” Are you a little baby Scrooge reincarnated and haven’t yet learnt “Humbug”? Why did I ever eat so many of you? What did you ever do to me to deserve that?


Feeling conflicted, I visited farms. I drove country roads. I saw them everywhere and I felt joy. Was I seeking redemption, an atonement for my sins? I gradually faced my demons head-on and stared at my restaurant’s giant butcher’s display counter filled to the brim with tender, red-fleshed delights and I felt guilt. Meat for the masses as we’d do over 150 covers a Saturday, at what cost for the environment, for nature, for earthkind?


Yet. Yet still I was, and still I am a gluttonous, carnivorous beast. My hunger and strong urge for satiation overrides my ethical, empathetic sensibilities. I wrote the first half of this newsletter (essentially all of the above) and walked out of the restaurant that evening and devoured a lamb Adana Köfte from a nearby spot. Did I weep as I stuffed minced animal joy in pillowy soft pide bread in my salivating gullet? Absolutely not. No amount of raw chopped sumac onions inside my baton-shaped wrap of joy could bring water to my greedy eyes. I vacuumed up the whole thing like a ghostbuster suctioning in a ghoul.


But there is a middle ground. I consciously consume way less lamb now, avoiding it like a dark addiction and relapsing only when I can bear it no longer. I cannot recall the l last time I scrumptiously forayed into the dark arts of a veal cutlet. No suckling pig for this tribesman. Poisson is poison. The levels of consumption of animals has lessened, though it’s still to a degree which could still trigger a militant vegan into committing heinous acts on me. But I am now at least at peace. We source the best looked after sheep and cows in the land. Our lamb has been replaced by ex-dairy producing mutton, who have lived a long, harmonious life via the considerate, loving care of Matt Chatfield in Cornwall - whose techniques of regenerative farming makes the possibility of sustainable livestock appear hopeful in this burning, decaying world of dystopia. I visited his farm and saw happy, free sheep with an abundance of character only matched by the vast land they were free to roam. These creatures live a long life and are only culled at an elderly age, bringing bags of wisdom and experience (or let’s be more truthful here: FLAVOUR) with each bite. They even have names. The sheep have names. They exist and they have names. Their cooked fats are masterful expressions of healthy living, melting at the tongue and soothing the palate like a drug. Equally, the  Mr Txuleta beef we sell are from the same way of life, ex-dairy British cows adopting the same industry-leading Basque farming techniques to ensure a longer leading, happy life for dairy-producing cows before they’re culled at an old age. Essentially, old, happy, big animals who are converted to tasty delights when they’re near the end of their cycle. Big. Old. Happy. Ethical. Meat. Delicious.


Essentially, Mangal 2’s identity crisis was my identity crisis. Fewer animals on the menu. Older, geographically closer, organically reared and sustainably-existed meats from happy farms. 


And here’s a thought: Do you believe in reincarnation? Do we die, and our souls remerge in another living entity, and the cycle and continuation of life resumes? I’d like to hope so. And if true, do you know what I’d like to come back as? Kobe beef. A Cow in Japan massaged and fed beer all day, every day, whilst classical music is blared out to me, as if I’m some sort of medieval dandy living in a castle in a fortress in France. A life of oblivious pleasures in a land of wisdom, order, respect, culture and serenity. And then you eat me.

The Stage

Ferhat Dirik

It’s a peculiar feeling, being front of house. You carry plates over and receive all the praise, criticism, impatience, queries, insults, indifference, love, unsolicited feedback, and the rest of it. Yet you have no involvement in the dish being constructed. You can’t make it arrive any faster. You have little say in portion sizes. And you’re not the individual who decides on the seasoning/temperature. Yet everything goes through you. Every response. You are a sponge, soaking in every morsel, every squeeze of juice of communication and with what little moisture is left in your frantic, adrenaline-fuelled brain in “service mode” you drip out and drop trickles of information back to chefs - whom are already carrying heightened sensitivity and little composure as they battle with fire and heat and gas and smoke, all to enable food comes out adequately and promptly.

Who has it tougher? Front of house or back of house? The latter work longer hours, cut fingers, burn hands, have constant pressure and receive a lot of scrutiny over the slightest imperfections. Sounds impossibly difficult - borderline, well, shit. Front of house, however, have an equally arduous beast to tackle and tame: the public. A bad interaction with a rude guest, and it ruins your night. Most are lovely and courteous and thankful and polite and receptive. Rarely, but perhaps more impactful, they are awful; they snap fingers; they don’t look at you as they order food - treating you like second-class citizens; they’re perverts and they don’t care how they show it, however uncomfortable it makes you; they remove service charge because a chef undercooked the fish despite that having no semblance to the service itself.


You break a glass and it’s the loneliest place on Earth.
You spill a drink and you’re momentarily the world’s worst person.
The table isn’t ready because the table occupying it are obnoxious and couldn’t care less there is a peering, restless group itching to righty overtake their space at the designated time slot and you receive all the abuse as the unflinching diners who refuse to leave act oblivious to all the goings on and refuse to do the decent thing and ask for the bill knowing full well time’s up and they’ve consumed all of their desserts and digestives.

It all sounds so morbid. Who would do such a job? Late shifts. Lots of cleaning. The night bus home. Anti-social hours. You become obsessed with food and wine so you spend a lot of your days off visiting restaurants and spending what little disposable income on dining out. Someone once said to me “Hospitality workers are the world’s poorest millionaires” and there’s a lot of truth to that. You want the lifestyle and experiences but the industry does not permit you to earn the same a banker, lawyer, trader, tech employee does - though you probably work just as hard (if not harder).

Why do this job? First of all, there are many who do it because they have to. They need a paid gig and they need it fast, and stay because other plans fall through. Or the artwork they produce (a lot of artists in front of house roles, did you not notice?) isn’t being commissioned and when it finally is, it’s often not paid on time. Or their degree is still in its second year and they need money for the rent (to be fair, we ALL need money for the rent). Or the hours suit them as it compliments their other job, say, as a freelance designer.

Then, there are the career servers. The ones who I’m really speaking about. The ones who make this an art form. Every night, the lights are dimmed; the menu rehearsals completed; the cigarettes ravishingly consumed out the back; the deodorant sprayed; the wee flushed; showtime, baby! They’re on stage.

Performers.

We’re performers, without the fanfare. We’re all nuance, and flair, and subtle movement of the hips as we glide past packed tables. We’re all smiles and positive energy and competence. We’re on show. We swan, we don’t run. We reek of core strength, balancing glasses and plates and personalities across the floor. Our confidence is impregnable (on the surface). We jump in and out of conversation with dozens of different individuals in any given service hour, and humour and entertain and comfort them all. We make cocksure recommendations and exude the air of a know-it-all. At our best, customers love us. They reference our names in their reviews. They walk in and see we’re working and feel relief - they’re being looked after tonight and nothing can go wrong. We hold power over the difference between a forgettable evening and a fantastic night. We make the same joke again and again and receive the same response because each time it’s to a new customer and nobody knows we’re massive frauds.

It’s addictive. It’s intoxicating. It’s not for everyone but it’s ours. Because for 4 hours every evening, we’re our own gods.

And then you go home. The bus driver couldn’t give a fuck who you served tonight, if you don’t run to catch the giant red bastard in 5 seconds, they’re speeding off and you have to wait another 23 minutes for the next one. You go arrive in your digs. Black mould in the ceiling the landlord swore they’re dealing with. Heating not working at full blast and the duvet cover keeps realigning in the most infuriating manner. Council tax. You’re humbled. You’re just a person, working a service job, on an unremarkable wage.

And come tomorrow, by around 6pm and you’re refilling someone’s tap water which they could easily do themselves, you find inner peace and contentment. At a stretch, you find happiness. We live to serve, and that’s alright by us. Someone’s got to do it, right?

What is a cuisine?

Ferhat Dirik

11:37 AM (2 minutes ago)

What is a “cuisine”? What makes it authentic? And for how long does that last?
These are questions I wrestle with daily as my restaurant began on one end of the spectrum and broke through to the other. A traditional kebab house inherited by a father raised in inner-Anatolia. That was our existence for 26 years. It’s the product we offered daily. Kebabs and meze working in tandem to offer authentic Ocakbasi fare.
Sure, the latter years brought the addition of Cypriot halloumi, Lebanese Falafel and a miscellaneous cultured stroke of idiocy with a King Prawn Kebab (all me), but the menu and its contents felt unremarkably Turkish.
Which makes a lot of sense. Almost every Turkish restaurant in the UK will have a menu that is 60-70% a copy-paste equivalent to another. Quality will vary. Portions sizes and prices, too. But the construct of it will be all too familiar. A tried and tested formula, like your Bengali curry house, like your Chinese takeaway, or an “Italian” pizza chain. You know what you’re getting and it is unapologetically AUTHENTIC.

Ali Dirik, Mangal II Opening, 1994


Except, when does it stop being so? Is what was a true representation of my father’s understanding of Turkish Ocakbasi cuisine many years ago also a true representation to what Sertac and I identify with as Londoners born and raised today? Is what an Ali Nazik Kebap is to my dad (A wonderful use of lamb, a glorious expression of aubergine and garlic yoghurt he was happily selling to the masses), the same food my brother or I wanted to sell?
—
I often ponder for how long establishments with an ethnic background will persist for? Immigration at vast numbers is a relatively new late 20th Century reality. The 60’s onwards brought many a tapestry of cultures into the UK. This contributed a very welcome onslaught of flavours and tastes to these shores. Immigrants opened restaurants translating dishes from home to cater to British gullets. Second generation immigrants (like myself) would take over said businesses and either run it to the ground (lord knows I tried), or keep it ticking (my greatest life achievement) to no particularly revolutionary avail. And look, I was raised by strictly Turkish-speaking parents. I was under no impression, growing up, that I was British, let alone, English. “We’re Turkish” would be the message my parents would forcibly indoctrinate me with since the moment I gained consciousness. So, taking over an authentically Turkish restaurant felt very normal for me, and selling very ordinary Turkish dishes felt honest. But I grew. My world grew. My identity grew. I realised I was multi-faceted. That I spoke more English than Turkish. That my inner narrative was becoming more the former than the latter. That I felt, increasingly as I’d spend long summers in Turkey every year, that I didn’t really completely belong there, either. And crucially, that I was a Londoner. London was and still is my home and where I feel most comfortable and complete. That my ethnicity is second to my identity. What sense did it make for me to sell dishes of Anatolian heritage, if I myself hadn’t stepped foot there in over 5 years?


What I did feel, and more importantly my brother (who creates every dish) felt, was the sense that whilst we feel Turkish and want to replicate Turkish flavours in our food (the impact of charcoal; the tanginess of ferments and wild greens; the malolactic qualities of curds and stringent dairy), we also wanted to hone in on what’s local, sustainable, seasonal and fresh. This is why Mangal 2 is what it is today. It is inspired by our heritage and our mother’s home cooking, by Sertac’s experiences in Copenhagen honing his craft, but also by the identity of being a metropolitan 2nd generation immigrant raised in a city melting and spilling with cultures that has no set constitution or playbook.
For the next courageous Google reviewer trigger happily lambasting us with a 1* for not being Turkish enough, I say: “%*$£*@!(£(^3”. But also: What we do is honest to us, and for that, we do not owe you an apology or explanation (though this article does go some way to provide that). How honest is your next proprietor selling food from a region they most likely have not lived in for the past 25 years? And I firmly believe said traditional cuisines will also come to this realisation over the next 15 years. It’s hard to envision the offspring of a family from, say, a South-East Asian background, educated and raised in the UK, now in their mid 20s, taking over their family restaurant and committing to implementing the same menu for another decade without an identity crisis/whole-scale change. Because at some point, it is plausible that such an approach will not feel honest to that individual and their own identity.
And it works both ways. Many chefs from a white, British background will fall in love with a certain cuisine for reasons we all fall in love - connection. They will identify something from that palate with what’s within themselves. Flavours unfamiliar in their home and schooling life will transcend and inspire them. And with the right dosage of luck, experience, skill, and often investment from outside sources, could open up a restaurant that bears no relation to their ethnicity or background. And inevitably the menu will provides twists and variations from the traditional rulebook. And you know what? That’s absolutely fine, because it will be honest to what they want to eat and what they want to serve - and as long as they do not pretend to provide a true offering of a cuisine’s authentic spine and soul, especially in a condescending westernised manner, all is fair. Because essentially, we hospitality creatures all just want to provide you a good meal at a fair price that will last long in the memory. That’s what it all boils down to. That’s the culture.