Eid-al-Fitr, otherwise known as “The Sugar Feast,” is a three-day festival marking the end of Ramadan, involving not just the usual holiday well-wishing and visits to grandma, but a strong emphasis in necking as much delicious sweet stuff as possible. Muslims in India might gorge on hot, sweet coconut samosas, whereas in Indonesia copious amounts of dodol (a rich fudge) are eaten. See any news outlet over the last 24 hours and you’ll bear witness to the international display of sugary delights.
What seems to have escaped reports, though, is the late-night sugar-filled choices of many of London’s young Muslims. For the final iftar of the season, lots of them like to celebrate with some of the city’s most ridiculously kitsch offerings—not delicate pastries, but whipped-cream covered ice cream sundaes with thick chocolate milkshakes, all served with a healthy dose of disco lights and faux-marbled wall décor.
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Shafwan, Shamima, and Syed dressed to impress. You can’t be dressing shabby on a night like this.
The long opening hours of these pimped out ice cream parlors across the capital provide young Muslims with a place to hang out in lieu of the pub on a Friday night. “One man’s idea of tackiness is another man’s regular haunt,” says one hungry customer about to enter the popular Cookies & Cream on Mile End Road. An indication of how popular this place is during Eid is that they have to hire a bouncer.
That’s right—a bouncer for a small ice cream shop in Whitechapel.
High on life. And sugar.
The parlour interior. The nucleus of romance.
I spotted one of Cookies & Cream’s servers, 21-year-old Arif, enjoying some of his establishment’s finest. Arif lives on Brick Lane and is, at his tender age, one of the longest-serving staff here in the parlor and can spot his regulars—some who come from as far away as Birmingham—a mile off. It’s not just during Eid that ice cream parlors are a destination, though. “A lot of people come here on dates,” he tells me. “Desserts are aphrodisiacs!”
As the evening progresses, it seems that visiting the parlor is where the youth go once festivities have ended at the local mosques, and uncles are left snoring on couches. Some of the kids seem drunk on more than just sugar and life, but Arif doesn’t pass judgement. He has his mouth full.
Arif. Taking his job as a dessert server very seriously.
Darren the bouncer: Hard on the outside, gooey in the middle.
Naturally, when an ice cream parlor becomes as much of a destination for the young as a night club, it needs someone to mediate when things get bitter from all that sugar. This is Darren, who has been working the door at Cookies & Cream for two years. The parlor stays open until midnight on Eid, which is when the heady, perfumed crowds of girls in heels and guys in box-fresh adidas swell the most. Darren needs to be on-point. He is too busy to talk, but manages to tell me his favorite ice cream. “Ferrero Rocher,” he smiles. Of course. Hard on the outside, soft in the middle.
This small, family-friendly-by-day ice cream parlor in East London might be small, but what it lacks in size it makes up for with neon lighting and loyal customers. Two local Turkish lads, Alican and Tolga, both 18, told me that they’ve tried all the parlors from Dalston to Essex, but keep coming back here—especially on Eid—because the desserts are the best. That, and the fact that Alican sealed the deal with a girl after bringing her here on a date. “The first time I brought a girl here I had sex with her the same night.” What did you buy her? “Nando’s and a milkshake.” Conveniently, there’s a Nando’s next door.
Alican and Tolga. Evidently, their milkshake brings all the girls to the yard.
Even though the streets outside Cookies & Cream and other ice cream joints across the capital were buzzing more than normal (I overheard one guy joking to a bus driver that he’d beat him up if he didn’t let him pay for his ride home with an ice cream) as the first day of Eid celebrations came to a close, it seems that, on any given evening, late-night dessert parlors are the place to find Muslim teenagers in search of a high.
Food is so often the glue that sticks a community together. In some London neighborhoods, it seems like chocolate syrup might be that glue.
