Restaurants don’t exist in a bubble.
If they did, we’d all be happy to eat in ersatz traiteurs or risotterie (apparently, such a thing now exists) in the Food Courts of our local malls. But they don’t; and no matter how cunning the skill of the decorator – film posters, tin signs, retro footstuffs/bottles – or indeed of the chef and his brigade, we cannot convince ourselves that restaurants such as these are real deal.
Place matters. The streets matter. From the moment you book your table, everything about arriving at the restaurant contributes to the dining experience. And even if, like many of our customers, this means simply throwing on a coat and crossing the road, for them, part of the pleasure of eating at Ida is the self-congratulatory little pat on the back they can give themselves at having a proper neighbourhood restaurant on their doorstep.
We’ve lived in the Avenues for fifteen years ,yet we were not particulary familiar with Kilburn Lane and its environs. And even though, to the disgust of our three children, we’ve always made a point of going almost everywhere on foot, most of our perambulations tend to involve the Harrow Road. (Queens Park Library, Ladbroke Grove Sainsbury’s, the children’s primary school in Maida Vale, crossing the canal at the Ha’penny Step for our weekly shop at the market.)
However, once we opened Ida in 2007, we suddenly had to get to grips with what seemed like an entirely new neighbourhood on our doorstep. In the four years that we’ve been here, we’ve grown friendly with the lovely brothers, Taje and Vish, who run Yogi’s convenience store on the opposite corner of Fifth Avenue. There’s the little old man in holey plimsoles with a beard down to his chest, whom we nicknamed the Hermit, the toothless old crack addict whose house got spectacularly raided, the Kurdish brothers who run an unofficial pavement car repair workshop; the mysterious Costcutter with empty shelves and the scholarly man reading the Financial Times in the back room who looks like an African civil servant.
It’s not perfect, but in these four years it has become more familiar than the street where I live. Until, that is, last Friday.
At 4.30 pm, on an afternoon of glorious sunshine which should have gladdened the hearts of every Londoner, a fifteen year old was savagely attacked on Beethoven St. An attack so brutal, that our chef, who happened to be walking down Beethoven St on his way back from boxing training at the Jubilee, says he has never witnessed anything like it, in spite of growing up in the slums of Bari Vecchia. The victim managed to stagger down to the Costcutter, where he was then savagely beaten around the head with a bicycle and left for dead on the pavement.
Our chef intervened, he says in spite of himself; and as a result, has now found himself in the eye of the storm. I can’t go into details about his role in the whole affair, save to say that it is probably thanks to him that the boy is still alive. (In fact, it was touch and go if I would ever publish this post; and he only agreed, grudgingly, if I took out the bit about him saving the boy’s life. “That was Gesu’ Cristo”, he growled.)
Within minutes of the incident, Kilburn Lane was completely sealed off to traffic: incident tape blocked the entrance to Fifth Avenue, and bus drivers languished in their over-heated cabs. The streets briefly opened again in time for evening service at seven; but once news of the severity of the boy’s injuries became apparent; the tape was back, and for the entire service, the dining room was bathed in the eerie, revolving blue light of parked police cars.
At midnight, when all the customers had gone, we carried on bringing out tea and coffee to the stranded bus drivers. A Somali driver showed off his quite decent Italian, and although everything was all wrong, and a child’s life still hung in the balance, a kind of Blitz spirit prevailed.
The next morning, the sun shone just as brightly, and Kilburn Lane was full of pretty girls in strappy tops. It turned out, that the boy had survived the night; and, as I write, news is that he is getting better every day. Still feeling a little fragile, I went to an early Saturday morning class at Bikram Yoga, just a few doors down from Ida.
“What a night”, I said to the girl at the front desk as I swiped in my card.
She looked at me blankly. “Why, what happened?”
Ida Restaurant 