The evening before my 12.30-3.30am shift chez Ahmed, the responses elicited by my planned kebab van stint were varied. Some friends were thrilled because ‘obviously’ they would get more chips than normal and would get to push in front of the queue. Others emphasized my probable body odour issues; in fact Ahmed himself said to me quite early on – ‘You know you will smell quite badly of barbecue right?’ All of these comments, both the well meaning and the precautionary, served to build up the occasion. My initial curiosity at the finding out about the workings of a kebab van was beginning to be pushed aside by feelings of nerves.
But I needn’t have been nervous. I had so much fun in a van that serves essentially the entirety of a restaurant menu – kebabs, chips, jacket potatoes, curried meats – and the contents of a corner shop – chocolate bars, gum and soft drinks – through a small window in its side. The evening of my shift, I worked alongside Ahmed and his colleague Hemin. It quickly became evident that these guys genuinely enjoy their jobs a lot and my nerves quickly dissipated as their tireless energy for their work infected me.
Ahmed, originally from Morocco, has been based in Oxford almost all his life. His kebab van has been parked in its location on High Street, outside University College, for 23 years. Indeed, Ahmed was serving good, hearty grub to the Oxford masses – the kebab van’s clientele extends far beyond the student population, with a number of regular taxi drivers calling up in advance to place their orders – long before many undergraduates were even born. Something must have kept him working the same job for all these years.
I asked him if he had any interest in working in a different occupation within the catering business, but Ahmed replied that he has worked in restaurants in the past but they simply don’t offer the same kind of job satisfaction that he clearly gets from working in his kebab van. Even from the rather disparate comings and goings of customers that evening, it became clear to me very early on that Ahmed loves the fast pace and the high pressure of working in a confined space to deliver quick, hot, and quality food. I use the word ‘quality’, because though the food that the kebab van serves may not exactly be low in calories, Ahmed and his men strive for fresh food. Salads are prepared just before the van opens up shop. Leftovers at the end of the evening are thrown out. As far as possible, things are prepared from scratch on a daily basis. And though burgers and kebab meat may be precooked before the van opens for service, they are all reheated to order. Chips, too, are served piping hot. These guys care about their food and the service they offer us and this speaks volumes about their dedication to the trade.
Working with 190 degree oil, and a hot plate that is over 200 degrees, in addition to dealing with drunk customers desperate for their late-night fix, is a fine art, which these guys have mastered down to a tee. There isn’t really room for two people to walk side by side along the central galley of the van, but that’s no big deal to Ahmed and Hemin. They have a great partnership, Ahmed explained to me. They can handle a number of orders each at any one time and if one needs to get through, to get a can of coke or a dollop of hummus for the portion of chips they have just deep-fried, the other can ‘sense’ that and can squeeze in towards their side of the counter to make room. It’s quite a marvel to watch. Two pairs of hands juggle with tongs, knives, hot and cold foods to provide for their vast menu.
Last Thursday, there were three pairs of hands, though. Having been politely given a cup of tea (did you know that Ahmed can serve you a veritable selection of hot drinks too?), Ahmed and Hemin set to teach me as much as they could, so I could strive to be more of a help than a hindrance to their kebab van operation that night. The beauty of working is such a small space is that nothing is more than a few steps and an arm’s reach away. But the easiness stops there.
Over the course of my shift, I learnt the technical ins and outs of serving perfect polystyrene boxes of food. Most important is box-holding. The aforementioned temperatures of the various appliances in the kebab van mean that food is really hot, and you don’t want to be spilling hot beans on over your fellow colleagues as a result of a collision in the galley. You need a firm grip of the peach-coloured containers, with your thumb clasped along the centre fold of the box, and the rest of your hand holding the bottom.
The second technical skill I had to master was paper towel ripping. The towel rolls that hang from the fluorescently lit canopy of the van’s window are placed at the perfect height to grasp a sheet or two before handing over food to customers. I was determined not to get flustered with streams of paper towels cascading down into the salad containers directly below them. Ahmed made it look very easy. I had a go. And succeeded a fair few times. Indeed, the only times I messed up were in the presence of drunken friends returning home. And in those cases, I should like to blame my paper-towel ripping shortcomings on a nervous desire to impress them.
The hardest thing of all was shaving doner kebab meat. A lot of multi-tasking is involved in this activity. The (surprisingly heavy) electric shaver needs to be held at the right angle to produce the perfect strip of shaved meat. All the while, you need to use one of your feet to control the power pedal for the shaver with one foot, and grip the bottom of the rotating doner stick with tongs to stop it from rotating. Using three different limbs and getting them to do different things was difficult, and I’ll admit that doner kebab shaving was not my forte. I much preferred serving up orders of burgers and masala chicken, and adding the cheese, salad and sauces to chips. Lots of comparatively straightforward tong action.
Given the number of kebab vans dotted around Oxford, it’s easy to take them for granted. We shouldn’t though. These guys work flat out. Their job is a daytime one as well as an night time one – shopping and lots of preparation has to be done every day, whilst bed time for Ahmed and Hemin is normally around 6-7am.
It would be easy to see how these guys could be irritable people but they are so far from that. They’re happy and friendly. We shared jokes together. At one point Ahmed was convinced that a drunk Polish tourist ‘liked me’ and so I, not Hemin, should definitely serve him.
Apparently, Babylove was quite fun that night, but last Thursday was certainly a night that I was happy to miss.
