Mangal II Restaurant is a 37-minute walk from The Emirates Stadium – home to Arsenal Football Club. Or one quick bus (the 236) away, zigzagging the back roads of Newington Green onto Finsbury Park. Or about a quarter of an hour via a Lime Bike. I know this because I am an ardent Arsenal fan and used to hold a season ticket up until 2021. I awaited 11 years to obtain one, had it at last under the reign of terror of Unai Emery, persevered through Covid, and gave it up that summer five years ago. At the time, I was recently separated, financially insecure, very drunk and reaching peak alcoholism, and needing therapy. With limited funds and a desperate need to address the latter point, it became a straight penalty shootout between keeping my ticket and seeing less of my kids, or using that money to pay for EMDR therapy, having my weekends free and not adding more stress to my day-to-day life as a Gooner. I made the wise choice and have no regrets about prioritising my own mental health.
Obviously, since then, Arsenal have finally reverted to being good at football. Maybe I was the bad omen at the ground, dragging the team down? But the moment I gave up my seat, we hired Mikel Arteta soon after, and the team’s trajectory has been a steady climb back up the footballing summit, whereby we clinched the Premier League title after 22 years in the abyss, and narrowly missed out on winning our first ever Champions League crown, losing the final to Paris Saint Germain.
I have a horrible confession. I was actually not too disappointed that we lost the final – for purely selfish reasons. The final took part whilst I was airborne flying back from Tokyo to London. I had zero Wi-Fi access on the plane, and I’m sorry but after years of supporting them at a huge personal, financial, emotional, social and time-consuming cost, if they were to win the biggest trophy of their history whilst I was unable to witness it, this would have stung hard for the rest of my life. I am not that big of a person. I can be a petty, small man on these matters. Much like Larry David’s self-caricaturised depiction in Curb Your Enthusiasm, I am fuelled by stupid micro wars of wrongly perceived personal attacks of injustice. Of course, Arsenal would win the Champions League just when I can’t witness and celebrate it – just to spite me and punish me for my undying love for them! is what I would have thought had we won. Fortunately for me, and to the dismay of tens of millions, this reality never transpired. I will overcompensate for this disloyalty by supporting them even harder in next season’s Champions League. What that would entail is currently unclear, but if I need to sing along to North London Forever loudly (perhaps the most ick/cringe song I’ve heard in my life after Mr Brightside) then so be it. I will be Ferhat Dir-ick for the love of the game.
Mangal II. The restaurant. What is the relation to these football musings? Nothing, really. Except, I guess, I always felt that Mangal II is representative of a London identity. We’re London first; ethnicity second. My staff are multicultural. We are neighbourhood-focused and independent. We’re considered somewhat cool – whatever that means, and trendy, but have a deep-rooted history of glory and then barren years of survival. We are unbelievably polarising as an entity because we don’t conform to stereotypical (traditional Turkish food) expectations. Often either loved, or ridiculed and hated. These can all also be applied to Arsenal.
I skipped the parade. My devotion and support for this club feels deeply personal, and I basically did not feel like celebrating with hundreds of thousands of other people after travelling 30+ hours from Japan to London with my two kids under the age of 12. I arrived Sunday at 7am, completely shattered and desperate to return home to my girlfriend, have some food (kebabs, obviously), and completely switch off for a good 24 hours. God himself could not have dragged me to the N1 postcode that day. Not even Dennis Bergkamp could, a man greater than any mere mortal in my eyes.
There have been minor Arsenal/Mangal II overlaps through the years, outside of my own fandom. The truth is that a vast majority of footballers are uncultured swine who would rather eat at Sexy Fish and Nobu than good restaurants. So, we’ve not had many players come in. But, surprise surprise, Hector Bellerin did. Of course he did. The wokest footballer of them all, the “Soft-Boy” prince, the original “Performative Male”, swung by here about five years ago. Naturally, I wasn’t in and missed this opportunity. But my brother was there, and though he’s not a football fan by any stretch of the imagination, he knew how big a deal it would have been for me, so he spoke to Hector and asked him if he could FaceTime me with him? Hector and I had a brief, pleasant chat, I hung up and gushed at the exchange. Me (at the time age 32) fawning over the fact that a 26-year-old Spanish fashionista sportsman would spare two minutes to humour me by accepting a conversation opportunity. The sheer palpability of how excited it made me was embarrassing.
And now, we’re champions. We ate shit for years from mass media, deemed too soft, too elitist, too sneaky. When in reality, whilst some of these observations may be true to an extent, it boils down to the fact that Arsenal represents all things London, all things cultural, all people of colour. They can’t stomach it. From the moment this club celebrated footballers of black and Afro-Caribbean heritage, it became the point of hatred by the neutral. We, as Londoners, often look beyond our differences to accept our fate as one-united brethren of this fine melting pot of a city. We identify with Arsenal, because Arsenal represents us. After a spate of negative reviews and feedback from Turkish and even English customers of late for not representing what is traditional, I implore the dining public to come to my restaurant with an open mind and no prejudices. Culture, food and identity is subjective. We use seasonal British produce on dishes that have Turkish roots. It exemplifies everything about me, London-born and raised Turk/Kurd. It’s authentic to me, and my understanding of what it is to be from this greatest of cities.
I chose to support Arsenal at age five because I immediately felt at home with their playing style and felt vindicated by all the fellow ethnic kids I grew up with supporting them over Spurs or Chelsea. Arsenal was the unifying team of the playground, of all the kids who weren’t white, essentially, and the white kids who supported Arsenal were often less racist than the other kids. That was my experience. Feeling “othered” was never nice during my childhood, but there was always the success of Arsenal in my earlier years that I could affiliate with and turn to. After decades of gloom, we’re now back. I feel happiness, relief, and utmost pride in our journey. And whilst I won’t be going to all the ritualistic games like I used to in the past to prove my allegiance, I’ll know that when I’m in my restaurant there will be 60,000 people 2.8 miles away cheering on the champions and coming in for a bite here pre-and post-game. If Arsenal can shut out the noise and focus on what they believe in and achieve success, perhaps I can be less reactive to a lot of negativity I face on a weekly basis for not conforming to rigid expectations. Not everyone loves Arsenal, and certainly not everyone loves Mangal II. And that’s ok. The right people are on our side.