Lee Tiernan on Black Axe Mangal: "The more extreme I go, the less mediocre I can be"
"We are probably the worst run restaurant in London,” says Lee Tiernan, summing up the past four years at Black Axe Mangal, his riotous restaurant in Highbury, north-east London. By this he’s referring to the fact that the Turkish-inspired restaurant he opened with his wife Kate in 2015 doesn’t publish its menus online (“because I do a lot of last-minute tinkering”), has no phone number and hasn’t updated its website in months because the log-in details have been lost.
There’s also no signage, because the pair ran out of money during its opening and by the time they had the funds to buy one they considered it too far down the line, in spite of the fact that practically every night people tell Tiernan it’s taken them ages to find the place. He even admits that his Instagram game isn’t as strong as it should be. “To the outsider, it looks like we do as little as possible.”
And yet people overcome all these obstacles on a nightly basis to eat at Black Axe Mangal and experience the orgy of open-fire cooking, loud music and punchy, unapologetic flavours for which BAM – as Tiernan affectionately and appositely refers to it as – has gained a cult following. Lauded by critics and chefs alike, BAM regularly appears on Restaurant magazine's list of the UK’s Top 100 Restaurants and currently sits at number 51 – sandwiched between Pollen Street Social and The Quality Chop House, no less. In fact, so head-turning has his restaurant proven to be, Tiernan has just penned his first cookbook with Phaidon – and it’s fair to say it sticks out like a bloodied thumb in the publishing house’s portfolio of high-end cookbooks.
A restaurant like no other
If you don’t know BAM then it’s hard to compare it to any other restaurant. Taking loose inspiration from Turkish grill houses, the cooking is as loud as the accompanying music and decor, with its erotic hand-painted imagery on the wooden floor and garish flowery tablecloths. Until recently the tiny kitchen’s huge wood-fired oven bore the faces of glam rock group Kiss, but now pays homage to cult 70s gang movie The Warriors.
Everything at BAM is turned up to 11 – not just the volume of the music that thuds through the speakers but the flavours as well. Having worked for a decade at St John Bread and Wine before taking the plunge, Tiernan has a confidence in his cooking and a love for offal that comes with working in the Fergus Henderson stable for any substantial period of time.
Smoke, spice and meat are cornerstones of his cooking, with signature dishes including squid ink flatbreads topped with smoked cod’s roe and an egg; fiery smoked lamb shoulder and kidneys with pickled red cabbage; beef tartare served with prawn toast; and blood cake fried rice.
Yet while some of St John’s DNA inevitably runs through Tiernan’s cooking (the recipe for the St John rarebit appears in the book, but on a flat bread), Black Axe Mangal is a very different beast, and consciously so. “During my time at Bread and Wine the food was of a very good standard and I could do it in my sleep, but I wanted to do something not associated with the restaurant. That’s not to say I have anything against it, I love that kind of food, but I needed to do something different.”
This point of difference initially manifested itself as a kebab shop, with Tiernan launching Black Axe Mangal as a pop-up in the meat packing district of Copenhagen, before taking on a former Chinese takeaway in Highbury to open a 17-cover restaurant (it has since been extended to 24 covers).
“I wanted to do kebabs and then immediately after the first night I decided that was not what I wanted to do – so I evolved it,” he says. What brought about this change of heart?
“I made the mistake of cooking what I thought people wanted to eat and realised I didn’t have the skills to do that,” is his considered response.
“That desire to get out of that net and free ourselves from doing what I said I was going to do encouraged us to trial lots of things and change the menu often and try to be different and daring – that’s one reason why we have become quite popular, we have a very loyal, hardcore regular trade.”
Low-key, high energy
Another reason for BAM’s popularity is the low-key element of its launch and its edgy, devil-may-care appeal reflected not just in the decor but in the cooking.
The pair opened the restaurant on a shoestring budget, eschewing investment and relying on friends and family to help with its creation, including helping build the bar and wooden benches and to paint it. “I didn’t put too much thought into it, I had a certain amount of money and we managed to scrape open. Looking back it was great to have done that. I didn’t have a guy with a clipboard come in and tell me how much further behind they were. It was a nice experience.”
The kitchen kit isn’t the envy of any young chef looking to open his first restaurant, with the restaurant running on the same equipment it opened with – namely two induction hobs, a fryer and a Thermomix (Tiernan bought a service fridge 18 months ago). Its biggest outlay was its “huge penis compensation oven” which is used to cook the majority of bread, meat and veg.
“We’re cooking what we can with what we’ve got and hopefully it’s delicious. There was kit we were told we should have, or that I thought we should have, but when we realised we couldn’t afford them it gave us a smaller box to play in, and we haven’t really branched out from that. We would have loved a few more shiny bits – I wanted to have a stainless steel table fabricated but instead we used all the original stainless steel from the Chinese takeaway it used to be.”
If anything, BAM’s success is proof a restaurant doesn’t need a lot of high-tech kitchen kit to make an impact, something which is not lost on Tiernan. “It’s fine – it’s not as if we’re cooking on an open fire in the middle of a field every night. Although I fantasise about that quite heavily – my ultimate dream is to have a restaurant with no walls and no ceiling, just a big fire and a couple of tepees if people have too much to drink and can’t drive home.”
A book less ordinary
If you pick up a copy of Black Axe Mangal the book, the first thing that will strike you is how different it is to anything else in Phaidon’s portfolio. Those who are easily offended might take umbrage at certain aspects, most likely the recipe for Tiernan’s c**t biscuits (“Kate and I love the word c**t, and the reaction it can receive. Ourmost common usage of it is as a powerful compliment,” Tiernan writes). There’s images of naked women ‘wearing’ nothing but doughnuts and of a half-naked Matty Matheson with Tiernan’s towering version of a Big Mac, made with flatbreads rather than a burger bun, balanced on the Canadian chef’s tattooed belly.
While some recipes are tricky for the domestic kitchen, despite Tiernan’s attempts at keeping them as everyman as possible, some are much more achievable, not least the one for caviar and sour cream crisps that involves a tin of caviar and some Pringles (described as “perfect finger food if you’re hosting an orgy”).
For a company more used to publishing serious cheffy cookbooks that invariably talk about ‘journeys’, ‘ethos’ and ‘philosophy’, BAM is a leftfield choice for Phaidon. Like the restaurant, the book is rock ’n’ roll, portraying a less serious side to the industry. Now that it’s published, one wonders whether he thinks it might be perceived as a bit ‘laddy’?
“That’s not a word I’d associate with the book,” he says. “I feel that there’s a fun element to it. When I opened the restaurant, although it wasn’t that much fun at the time, it was stressful, the ultimate goal was to have some fun – not to be too stuffy or take ourselves too seriously. We wanted to have a laugh – that ethos comes through in the book.”
“What I didn’t do is think about it too much. I wrote about what I know and what my restaurant gravitates toward – the book is an accurate and honest interpretation of where I was at when I was writing it.”
That said, Tiernan admits his approach might make the book divisive, but then he’s been used to generating this feeling with Black Axe Mangal from the very beginning.
“I wrote a book I knew I could write, whether that divides people or not I don’t know. It’s like the restaurant. People come into to [BAM] every night, give us their coats, sit down and read the menu, ask for their coats and leave – and that’s fucking great, I respect that massively. I’d rather they do that then sit through a meal in an environment they can’t fucking stand.
“We’ve resigned ourselves that rather than appealing to 90% of the demographic we actually appeal to a 10% demographic, 2% of which will probably like it. But as long as I concentrate on that 2%, then hopefully it will be fine.
“I’m flattered [Phaidon] decided to take a punt on something different. It’s nice to record this moment. I don’t think BAM will be around forever, but hopefully for the foreseeable future.”
The future’s Black
So what of the future? Tieran insists there will only ever be one BAM in circulation but says that the regular turning away of diners each night because of space restrictions often leads to talk about relocating to a bigger site. He says BAM will easily do 70-80 covers a night with only two (sometimes three) chefs in the kitchen (“it’s an aggressive amount of food for two people to put out every night”).
He describes the uncertainty of the current political situation and rising rents as “intimidating” but has not ruled out a move. “Until we know what the fuck Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn are going to do to this country we will bide our time. There are a few places I’d love to open – I love east London, especially Shoreditch. If something did come up that seemed right, we’d go for it.”
If he did move BAM to a bigger site he says he would close the original, or maybe retain it and do something entirely different. “BAM is a bad business model – it’s a tiny restaurant that can’t be replicated.”
In the meantime, the challenge is to keep the original vibe alive, something which he believes is only possible because of London’s current dining scene. “I like to think it’s the package: the food, the vibe and the fun,” he says of BAM’s success thus far. “The London dining scene is more vibrant than ever before. If you want a more grown-up experience but something that’s still exciting you go to [Tom Brown’s Hackney Wick restaurant] Cornerstone, if you want something a bit less mature and loud maybe you come here.
“People have got a lot of choice now. BAM could not have existed 10 years ago when there was a certain attitude as to what a restaurant should be like. Now restaurants have got more freedom and fluidity – people are more accepting and want new things.
“As long as we are offering decent food and keep evolving the menu, I hope people will keep coming back. I’ve always been petrified of doing something mediocre. The more extreme I go, the less mediocre I can be.”
Black Axe Mangal by Lee Tiernan is published by Phaidon, priced £24.95.
Photography by Jason Lowe
This feature first appeared in the December 2019 issue of Restaurant magazine, the leading title for the UK's restaurant industry. For more features, comment, interviews and in-depth analysis of the restaurant sector subscribe to Restaurant magazine here
