Maggie’s
Maggie and Oliver Khondoker
From The Emerald Isle
My mother was born in 1945 in a small village called Cootehill in Ireland. She was the youngest of seven children. Back in those days in Ireland life was really hard: there was no electricity, no running water, food was scarce, and it was just a rural life.
My mum told us that at school, if the other children were having sandwiches but she had no lunch herself, she would eat torn up pieces of paper pretending they were bread so that the other children wouldn’t notice and think their family had no money. I believe it was this hardship that gave rise to her generosity and her compulsion to make sure everyone was well fed and watered.
Mum left home for Dublin at the age of 14 and started working. and at the age of 21, she boarded the boat bound for England, staying first in the Torbay area before moving on to London. She worked as a waitress in hotels, it was not long before she met my dad while they were both working at a hotel in Leicester Square. They married and had my brother Anthony, myself, and then my sister Fiona.
The Café
My dad was a major part of the café; he was also a first generation immigrant. And you can imagine the controversy caused by my mother, a white blonde lady, courting a man from Asia. There was a lot of stigma, but they found within each other something that really sparked and something worth fighting for.
70 Hours A Week
In 1983 with the encouragement and help of their friends, my mum and dad opened Maggie’s café, and there began the start of a relentless 70 hour working week, 6 days a week, and even on a sunday, taking us up to East Street Market so we could buy things for the restaurant.
Banging On The Ceiling
We lived above the café in a one bedroom flat for 12 years. Whenever they were short staffed, my parents would get the mop head and bang it on the ceiling.
So from a young age, the restaurant dining room was our living room. Back in the days we were a working man’s café. You’d get the hard sort of Irish builders coming in in the evening and the suited and booted office workers in the morning. You learned life from just sitting there having your dinner, and watching people.
The first five years were certainly hard graft for our parents but slowly they built the business they always wanted. My mum had a vision of a place where you were always welcome, and would be provided with a home cooked hearty meal at an affordable price. She let people run tabs which might never be paid, and she had a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich at the ready for those that she knew had nothing. She gave herself a tennis elbow from carrying the big teapot from table to table.
Courtesy Oliver Khondoker
Image: Elzbieta Piekacz
For Everyone
There was always a place at her table and many have said that Maggie’s was a home from home, that she made them feel like she was always on their side. She had time for everyone.
Gone But Not Forgotten
My mum died two years ago, during the Covid lockdown. A funeral was limited to thirty people, so we gave people the opportunity to line the streets of Lewisham on the day of the funeral. We drove the hearse the whole way down Lewisham Road, and I believe there were over a thousand people that came out to pay their respects. It just goes to show the amount of people that she touched emotionally, and became friends with across all different cultures and nationalities.
