Recession. Depression. Developers. Rain. Handballs. Floods. Bono. Crystal Swing. Anglo Irish Bank. Pat Kenny. Enda Kenny. Fianna Fáil. The f-ing Dáil. It sure is a shit time to be living in Ireland. Generations old family run businesses are shutting up shop. Tescos isn’t 24 hours anymore so you can’t go shopping at 4a.m. for Coco Pops and eggs and what was that other thing? Oh yeah, Rizzlas. There’s MASSIVE buildings everywhere and they’re all EMPTY. I presume they’ve been built by Hollywood to shoot their next post-apocalyptic blockbuster but I get my news from the guy in the comic book shop so what do I know. There’s a big looooooooooooooooooooooong line at the dole office and a not very friendly fat face at the end of it. Things are so bad the Department of Finance can’t even afford to pay for a couple of weekends of good weather in the summer. BUT. There is a way to make some money in these hardtimes. Sell easy-to-hold processed ‘lamb’ to drunk people.
- Mario’s cool Turkish cousin with his big knife
The example I’m giving is of Galway but it can be said of a number of towns and cities across Ireland. As businesses are shutting down, more and more of these Kebab ‘Restaurants’ are opening up. This is probably due to a combination of a number of factors.
- More Turkish Nationals are immigrating here.
- We’re going to places like Galway instead of Malaga for weekend breaks and are getting mad pissed and eating kebabs.
- Kebabs are cheaper than real food.
- You can’t eat two large battered sausages and live with yourself.
When I first visited Galway in 2006 this was the place to be at 3a.m. with your last ten quid:
- Cross Street Charcoal Grill
Back then you could even get a Doner Burger (kebab meat in a burger bun) for €1.90. And the chilli sauce was so hot you had to buy a glass of milk to stop from choking on fire. It was great. The staff were always friendly (They didn’t complain when a friend of mine dropped a €2 piece into the yoghurt sauce bowl. They just fished it out and accepted it as legal tender) and the mural on the wall of the blue mosque in Istanbul gave you something to focus on as you waited for your balance to find itself.
I don’t remember any other kebab places from that time except Abrakebabra, which sold shit overpriced kebabs to people who didn’t know any better. Abrakebabra in Galway is now closed (after having spent time as the Kebab Klub and then the Wok). We all know how shit Abra is. And how it makes you shit. It has a reputation as a place of drunken violence throughout the country. In Galway, after they changed the name to Kebab Klub, this happened:
Then it changed to the Wok. And This happened:
- Formerly Abrakebabra
Conlon’s Restaurant on Eglington Street used to be a fish restaurant/fish and chip shop. You could get a fancy fish dinner or you could get battered cop and chips. There were benches at one side and proper tables at the other side. Then it went on fire. When it reopened it was all posh. No more fish and chips. Instead it was Oysters and Baked Sea-Bass and Galway Bay Dolphins or whatever it is rich people eat. Bad business move.
- Formerly Conlon’s Seafood Restaurant
New York Pizza was a place up on Eyre Square run by a real New Yorker. He sold Pizza by the slice and was ever so nice about everything. The pizza’s were ‘daycent’, a little bit pricey but the quality was worth it. You could order delivery and sometimes he’d send you a pizza so big you couldn’t fit it in the front door (until you figured out you could hold it horizontally. And you needed more Rizzlas). Only about two months ago I was in there with the Irish Times reading about NAMA, watching the rain and wondering what the f-ing hell this guy from New York was doing here. Then:
- Eyre Square Charcoal Grill, Formerly New York Pizza
Another one? A friend of mine returned to Galway briefly recently after a three-year absence (he wasn’t in jail, I swear) and he told me to meet him in The Charcoal Grill.
I told him to meet me by the Arch. Just Easier.
- Mary Street Charcoal Grill
- Abbeygate Street Charcoal Grill. 15 steps from the Mary Street one.
How long until there’s a Charcoal Grill on O’Connell Street in Dublin? Until, like Supermacs, it’s in every town and village in the country? Is this the beginning of some dystopian future where this is the only kind of food available? Where most of our nutrition comes from ‘mystery meat’? Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell have touched on this in their books The Year of the Flood and Cloud Atlas. I’m just saying. Even record shops (Zhivagos) are turning into kebab shops.
- Eyre Square: ‘The Square Grill’
And this next place used to be called ‘Pacino’s on the Bridge’ and it sold pizza. Then someone had a better idea. This is the second Pizza place to be taken over by a kebab shop. The Turkish are kicking the shit out of the Italians in some cultural race to supply cheap oily sustenance to the intoxicated. This place still does sell Pizza but it’s far less important.
- Bridge Street: The Kebab Hut
Then finally there’s an old Galway favourite. The Kebab House is lucky because it is the only Kebab shop on Dominick Street where the Roisin Dubh empties on to every night. And even though I’ve been in there loads of times (don’t get the curry chips) I’ve only just now noticed it’s actually called Costello’s Kebab House. I may be guessing but I don’t think Costello is a Turkish immigrant.
- The Kebab House
Galway is a tiny city. These places are all within stumbling distance of each other. I walked around to all of them today when I was taking the photos and I was only in town for half an hour, most of which was spent trying not to look like a lunatic talking pictures of kebab shops. The fact that these places are replacing other businesses definitely says something about the state of the economy and the state of the people in that economy. When we go out nowadays we skip the restaurant altogether (and sometimes our home cooked option also) so we’re starving by the time we get thrown out of the pubs and a kebab is the only dinner-sized thing you can stumble up the road eating.
So long as we can afford to get drunk we’re happy.
