TD 1
ON THE 25TH A community-centric restauranteur, a
charitablecause volunteer and an animal-welfare advocate; this trio have swapped out standard Christmas Day tropes for an alternative 25th. words Amelia O’Mahony-Brady photos Malcolm McGettigan ANGIE WANG Owner, M & L Szechuan Chinese “M&L was originally owned by another couple; Graeme [Phelan, Wang’s husband] and I took over from them 16 years ago. Every 25th December, maybe 35-40% of our customers are regular, repeat diners and the rest are visiting for the first time. We have many Americans coming to eat on the day, and we’re very popular with French visitors. Chinese students always spend their Christmas dinner with us as well: for Irish people, whenever anything happens, their first port-of-call is the pub, but Chinese people will go straight to the restaurant. “We get loads of stock delivered on the 23rd and 24th, as now we only operate with bookings [on Christmas Day] because it gets incredibly busy – this way, we’ll already know how many people are coming. We open on the 25th at around 11:30am, as usual, and work until 9:30pm… a lot of our customers tend to come in around 3pm and 6pm, those are our busiest times. Our teahouse across the road [The Vintage Teapot] also opens – it’s a little easier to find a free table there on the day. “After we finish up, all of us will sit down to dinner together. Everybody helps out, nobody takes a day off. The restaurant is open all year round, but our staff can take about a month or two, during the year, to go back home. It’s very intense work. For the chefs, who first trained in China for three years, they’ll start at 11:30am and not have a spare moment until 6pm – so they need a holiday. They’ll go back to China, find some new Szechuan dishes and bring them back here. “I remember we had three generations of one family come to us for Christmas – grandparents, parents and children all eating together. Then there was another family that, every year, wanted to eat at the same table, with the exact same meal, always at 3pm. Nobody could take their seats! I’ve been living in Dublin for 20 years, and I’ve really found that the city is changing [for Asian eateries]. Many years ago, you’d only have three or four authentic restaurants – now, you have great Chinese food, Vietnamese food, Korean food… I find that people are more and more willing to change tradition on Christmas Day. “We don’t have a ‘secret’ menu, but we do have a Chinese menu, with more options than the English version – soon we’re going to combine the two. Chinese people will eat chicken feet, pork stomach, things that are normal for them, but many people didn’t want to touch those dishes outside of China – they’d want Chinese curry, which doesn’t even exist in China, because of the takeaway culture. Now things are changing… not everyone is openminded, but I hear more people asking, ‘why don’t you do an English version of the Chinese menu?’. They’re more willing to try now. It’s good to have change, you don’t always need all of that turkey! Having it on the one day is fine, but the birds are massive; you need a few days to get through it all… so many turkey sandwiches!” mlchineserestaurant.com 45