Jehan says she was hugely influenced not by her mother but by a Hijra (trans) cook called Kauser Bai, hired by her mother, who let her work alongside and from who she learned to love different flavour combinations. Her father worked as a waiter in Brick Lane and sent his wife and three of the children back to Bangladesh for a period of many years. Like her celebrated compatriot fellow chef, Nadiya Husain, she comes from a traditional large Bangladeshi family.
Jehan Rehman, co-owner and chef at the Magic Cafe On the day I first visited (a recommendation from next door Wild Honey) a couple were airing their new-born baby, who was snugly cocooned in her sling on dad’s chest. The place is clean, if a little bare, with tables under the awning for folk who like fresh air and distancing. Now its rolling again under the capable hands of Jehan Rahman and the buzz is slowly returning. Then he sold his premises to persons lacking in culinary flair or distinction of any sort and it metamorphosed into a grubby, sticky floored non-place. Their veggie cravings were handsomely served by a dreamy Sufi chef, Hafiz, who had compiled his recipes into 4 slim volumes and who made the most delicious above-mentioned olive oil baps. Earnest socialist type gatherings among the clan of therapists, social workers, Green activists, potters, weavers and many sorts of worthy citizens who lived in community minded East Oxford.
#FREEDOM WRITER MAGIC CAFE FULL#
The Magic Cafe in (then unfashionable) Magdalen Road, was a somewhat hippy hangout full of beards, beads and baby-buggies. Well, yes, all very cheery and idyllic and suitable for more innocent times when you might have chosen a watering hole to fit the needs of your particular mood: vanity choices, indulgences in that care-free background to our quotidian experiences tailored to frame what now seem covetably humdrum lives. Property prices are stable, says the paperĪ contemporary tinkling of Goldberg Variations “Wait till my book comes out,” he tells her. Sees greenery on red brick, the odd car cresting the sleeping policeman.Ī couple, he earnest and bearded, she listening professionally,
The headscarfed one taught English to a class of asylum seekers. The other had a haircut at the local salonīy Mary, of rosebud mouth and comfortable arms. Two women (one wearing a turquoise headscarf)Ī small reward, so innocent, at the end of a working day. Some years ago in more carefree times I was drinking coffee and enjoying an olive oil bread roll made by Hafiz, the original owner of the Magic cafe.
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