We never celebrated Christmas at home. Every year, December 25 would pass as an ordinary day — except for the fact that everywhere was closed and there would be great telly.
No gifts to unwrap, no family feasts with turkey and all the trimmings. I remember one particular year when I was a teenager, where I heated up a microwaveable roast, sat in front of the TV and thought to myself: “Well, isn’t this a bit depressing?”
Rather annoyingly, the restaurant would remain open every day of the year until I became a little older, a bit more involved with the family business, and could exert some influence brick-by-brick to the extent that I managed to convince my father to close Mangal II. It took a lot of persuading, a lot of reasoning and explaining that the £200 worth of trade we’d make would not be worth the effort of opening. Rather sweetly, his response was, “But where would Gilbert and George eat if we are closed?”
Gilbert and George dined at Mangal II every night of the year, bar Tuesdays. It was a part of their ritual, their routine. Whatever the festive day, bank holiday, special occasion, they’d arrive at 8pm and sit down for their meal which would consist of the same structure and order every evening, with the only variation being which cut of lamb, chicken. If they were feeling frisky, they would each have a quail.
The restaurant, my relationship with my father, the famous two aforementioned artists; they’re all highlighted and written about in our book, Mangal II: Stories & Recipes. It was released two months ago and I co-wrote it with my brother. While he focused on his recipes, detailing his journey and his craft and his culinary vision, my words chronicle a lot of the restaurant’s past, its struggles, the neighbourhood of Dalston, my own personal traumas and the complicated, Stockholm Syndrome-esque captivity and connection to Mangal II.
And then there are also the highs, the celebration of 30-years in trade as an independently owned family-run business in the heart of north east London.
I wrote it in the midst of personal turmoil. My brother left the restaurant midway through our creative writing process. My dad retired a few years prior. I was, and still am, very much alone in this venture. After a divorce, and then having to move back to the family home (albeit mercifully this was a temporary arrangement), and at the depths of my own struggles with alcoholism, I sat down and focused all my energies and pain into the words formulated in this book. I used the book as a form of therapy to unpick my own complicated relationship with my craft.
Sixty recipes run through the pages, recipes which run through the restaurant’s 30-year journey. Then there are the essays I wrote, all steeped in stories an institution like ours carries within its walls. It took me a whole eight months to arrange it.
For me, however, the highlights are at the very beginning and at the end. From the very start, I was adamant that I wanted to write up a feature on my father, Ali Dirik. He has had a remarkable life, and I wanted to champion his story.
A story of growing up in rural inner-Anatolia in a family of 20 siblings, of working as a shoe-shine boy from the age of seven with no formal education. A story of his sheer skill and dogged determination, of his bravado and self-belief. A story of the sacrifice of working 16 hours a day, every day, for decades. A story of an up-and-coming young chef in Istanbul immigrating to London, opening Mangal Ocakbaşı, and subsequently, Mangal II. I wanted the world to hear this man’s words, his own words, on how things came to be the way they did. It was an immigrant’s tale, one of extreme struggle followed by unprecedented success.
The only issue was that I wanted to conduct this piece in person through a prolonged interview, and he was in Turkey throughout a majority of the book’s formation. So I patiently awaited his return to London. When we finally spoke, our conversation managed to perfectly encapsulate the essence of Mangal II.
When the book was released in October, my parents were still in Turkey. Only last month did they return home to London and only then did they receive a physical copy. Within a day, my mum rang me, sobbing. She had read ‘Ferhat’s Story’.
“I know all the things which happened that you wrote about, because I was there throughout,” she said. “But to read them as words in a book, it brought back so many painful memories, my love.”
If through the last 30 years you have dined at Mangal II and have memories coming in on weekends after a night out in Dalston, perhaps you will have an interest in the book. If you are a second-generation immigrant in this behemoth of a city, it might mean something, too. But at its heart, it is the tale of a family, its ups and its downs. I think most people will find something in that.
This year, on December 25, I will be home. My children will sit with me as I serve them a feast. We will play board games and watch movies. And standing on the bookshelf, at the very top, will be Mangal II: Stories & Recipes, overlooking it all. It will be a Christmas to remember. If the book and its journey has taught me anything, it’s never too late to flip the script and create happier memories.
Mangal II: Stories & Recipes with Phaidon, is available now at all good retailers
