It’s hard to know where to start with the story of Adnan Dehaini and the family business that he runs with his wife of 33 years, Faten, and his son Hussein. Perhaps that his place, the unassuming Tyros on Tiviot Dale, just by the Cash Converters and the mobility scooter shop, is named in honour of his storied hometown, the ancient port city of Tyre in Lebanon - Tyros is the Phoenician name for it - over 4000 years old and one of the oldest cities in the world. It gets a name check in the Bible.
Or perhaps that before he and his family left their war-torn home in the wake of what became known as the ‘July War’ of 2006, he was a professional footballer for Tadamon Sour SC.
He and two of his brothers also played for the national Lebanese team in the late 80 and early 90s, while all five Dehaini brothers played for Tadamon, at one time all in the same squad. They’re basically the Nevilles of Lebanon, but multiplied some.
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Adnan - sometimes Andy - shows me pictures of the team from Google Images on his phone, pointing out his brothers in the back row, and him kneeling in front. “We are famous!” he says, roaring with laughter. “Ask anyone Lebanese, same age as me, they will know.
If they have interest in football, they know me.” He travelled the world as an international, playing in places like Egypt, Romania and Syria, and when he arrived in the UK, his son’s school team bagged themselves a pretty decent coach. He was pretty mean in Sunday league for a while too.
Or we could - and perhaps should - start with the food, which is completely, uniformly marvellous. The dishes, not a duff note among them, are, generally passed down from grandmother to mother to sister to daughter, down the female line of the family.
Adnan is more than happy in the shadow of Faten (it means ‘charming’ in Arabic, and she surely is). She is by far the better cook, he says, and she smiles bashfully, but they all cook together as a family, every day of the week.
“Sometimes the food has a little extra salt, that’s my wife,” he laughs. “If it’s a little bit spicy, that’s my son.” Adnan still cooks by measuring with spoons, he admits, but Faten just by sight and ‘feeling’.
The dishes vary week to week, and are served mezze-style, but generally include standards like homely chicken stews with cashew nuts, sticky, delicious shawarma, marinated for days, green beans with minced beef, okra, fried chicken cutlets, hot grilled lamb skewers with cold yoghurt and lemon chilli chicken.
There are crisp, garlicky salads, and homemade hummus. Their sujuk kafta kebab, one of Adnan’s personal favourites, is homemade too, with garlic and coriander, and then carved into thick slices.
The rice is stirred through with noodles, and served spicy or mild, the mild rice hinted with warm cinnamon. “When a child is born in Lebanon, we give them rice and yoghurt,” he says. “This is our food.”
One packed lunchtime last week, I nab the last table, and watch as the constant stream of customers and friends file through, a beaming smile from Adnan and Faten for every single one of them. ‘Hello lovely,’ Faten says to all who enter.
One lad in what looks to be an eye-wateringly expensive white tracksuit, paired with eye-wateringly expensive black Balenciaga trainers (I look them up, they’re about 600 quid), had been booked in for a tattoo at the nearby inking studio, but was then promptly turned around at the door and sent out to to Tyros to get lunch for everyone first.
He’s arrived a bit late - 1.30pm - so a fair chunk of today’s lunch menu is already gone. He puts the tattoo studio on speaker, and you can hear the panic in their voices. “Aww bluddy’ell,” comes a voice from the iPhone. “There’s norrr rice left!”
Luckily, there are still salads and ‘spicy tayters’, so the takeaway boxes get filled, just about. Adnan and Faten are in stitches throughout this pretty ridiculous exchange.
The tattoo lot were lucky today. Others are less so. At least 10 poor souls wander in, and have to wander out again, empty handed, one girl with her bottom lip jutting out theatrically. She looks crestfallen and I feel sorry for her.
People are unusually devoted to Tyros. Andy says that one regular, a solicitor, moved offices from Stockport to Chester some time ago, but he still travels back for lunch with his family from time to time. He’s not the only one.
As if by some cosmic fortune - at least I think it’s that at the time - Adnan’s first ever customer strolls in while we’re chatting at the till. Like, he was the first person to come through the door on opening day.
But it turns out he’s been coming several times a week for the past eight years, so the chances of this happening were actually pretty high. Luckily, they’d already put his lunch aside.
Ben runs DryWave, a charity which puts on sober music events helping people recover from addiction, and on his very first visit, he put £40 in Adnan’s till as payment in advance, and then just kept on coming. He still does the same thing every week, paying up front for his week’s lunches.
Who does that? “Look at me, I’m a picture of health,” he laughs. “45 years old and still looking fresh.” To be fair, he does look pretty good on it.
“Every time I eat here, it’s like a party of flavours blowing up in my mouth. Every dish that I have seems different to the last.”
There are many, many other regulars. Proudly, Adnan pulls out his phone and starts showing me pictures. There’s one with him and Stockport MP Nav Mishra (he comes for the falafel), and another with the Mayor, Adrian Nottingham, who are both frequent visitors.
United left-back Luke Shaw comes in too, and it emerges I’ve just missed Emmerdale’s Eric Pollard by about five minutes. He comes in with his wife every month or so.
Hussein, who studied performing arts at college, has appeared in Emmerdale with Pollard dozens of times as a background artist, something he does - currently - on the side.
Pre-covid, there would be queues down the street, every day of the week. And while today’s business is brisk, that volume has not quite returned. T
hey remain upbeat, despite this. “It’s very difficult,” Faten says. “90% of our customers were offices, and many work at home now. We can survive, but such a lot of things have changed. We’re lucky we’re a family business. We can stay close.”
Adnan is from a bewilderingly large family. His mother has nearly 200 grandchildren, thanks to his somewhat prolific seven sisters and six brothers. But thanks to the affection of the people of Stockport - and beyond - his extended surrogate family swells every day. “But it’s never about the money,” he says. “Our customers are like family too.”
Tyros, 7 Tiviot Dale, Stockport SK1 1TA
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