In between Stoke Newington and the Shoreditch and Old Street area, lies Dalston. From the bottom of Stamford Hill, Stoke Newington High street begins. This road, without so much as a kink or a break, morphs into Kingsland Road and continues its Roman-like route through Dalston and on towards Shoreditch.

For the purpose of this entry, we shall take a little walk from approximately where Kingsland Road begins, straight down until we take a left onto Ridley Road where we'll find, awaiting us, the inspirational Ridley Road market.

The Turkish Influence

Food

Starting from the Yucutan (a huge Irish pub with many TV screens showing live football matches almost constantly) one can't help but feel immediately the massive Turkish influence on the area. Opposite the Yucutan pub is Costcutters (or Dogin Gida Bazaar, sometimes affectionately called 'The Dodgy Geezer'), a Turkish grocery store open 24 hours a day. A bit further down on the right hand side is the Aziziye Halal Restaurant situated in and below the white-marbled Aziziye Mosque. Turkish, Kurdish, Bangladeshi, Nigerian and British all come to the Aziziye to eat the reasonably priced Turkish grub. From mercîmek çorbasi (lentil soup) to hellîm börek (pasty filled with feta cheese and parsley) for starters, to main dishes such as the ubiquitous Îskender kebap (Adama kebab bedded on a special home-made bread with tomato sauce, yoghurt, parsley and butter on top). It's delicious stuff and won't hit you too hard in the pocket .

Walking a little further down Kingsland Road, you pass more and more Turkish restaurants, some of which advertise their fare completely in the Turkish language - Turkish shop signs, Turkish menus - and this total absence of the English language somehow authenticates the places to the point of exoticism. This is the real deal; Turkish food, made by Turkish people, explicitly for its own community. In fact, the London Borough of Hackney is said to house a 50,000-strong Turkish community (at the time of writing) with a further 250,000 spread throughout the rest of London. Although Hackney has had a Turkish community for a number of years now, it wasn't until the problems in the Middle East erupted in the early 1990s that Dalston's Turkish and Kurdish population really 'exploded' with many persecuted Kurds arriving in Britain seeking political asylum. Also, many Turks had been working away in the Middle East earning, in the main, a good living. When they returned back home to Turkey, they found it hard to sustain the standard of living to which they had become accustomed. And so they moved again; this time to destinations throughout Europe, most notably to Berlin and Hamburg in Germany and of course, to London.

And what better way then for a displaced people to feel 'at home', than to breathe in the familiar smells of the Turkish kitchen.

Music

The Efe - Express Ticaret shop, run by the warmly and intelligent proprietor, Turgay Haqlil, sells nothing but Turkish music. Row upon row of cassettes and CDs line the walls inside the store. From older men with bushy moustaches who, you imagine, play a more traditional kind of music, to the younger generation, all outrageously contorted in a variety of coquettish poses, this gallery of Turkish faces beams down relentlessly in a collective hair-sprayed pose straight out of the 1980s. This is not to demean the music, though. Indeed, such luminaries as Ibrahim Tallises and the mega-star, Tarkan, are known and respected throughout much of the world.

Football

In the same way that most of Britain's social activity is centred around the pub, Turkish men spend many hours in any number of small cafés and 'members only' (men only) clubs spread throughout the borough. Often these clubs will be affiliated to a football club back home, such as FC Fenerbahce, FC Galatasaray and FC Besiktas, and as you walk by and peer in you'll most likely see men smoking cigarettes, sat around tables sipping tea or coffee from little glasses, playing cards. Often a solitary TV in the corner will show Turkish programmes, soap operas, news bulletins and of course, football matches. All in all these places must hold a peculiarly Turkish appeal, being in the main thoroughly spartan and very 'male'.

Continuing the walk down Kingsland Road, you pass various chemists, a dentist's surgery, a taxi car service, a small solicitor's office, a primary school with new Adidas-sponsored basket ball hoops, Turkish laundry services, flower shops and photographic studios (where they evidently can re-touch your features and take years off your face).

Dalston's poor but it's not desperate. It's a bit scruffy, a bit tatty in places, and if you're looking for it, there's definitely a faint air of criminality about the place. But usually trouble looks for trouble and if you keep a sense of awareness about you, you'll be fine. Dalston is an incredible mix of races, and on the surface at least, it really seems to work.

The African Influence

Go past the marvellous little one-screen independent Rio cinema on your right and almost imperceptibly the vibe gets less Turkish and more Afro-Carribean. The Akwaaba supermarket, 'a Carribean Food Shop in Association with the living Gospel International Ministry' according to the shop front, is a pokey store selling corn maize, smoked fish heads, maize husks, gari flour, cassava¹, puna yams, ken key made from corn - a bit like dumplings, bottles of Zomi oil from palm trees, bags of stinking dried shrimps, hot pepper sauce made form the African shietu pepper, and great hunks of African soap wrapped in paper which this Researcher was told is great for a black man's skin but would be wasted on his own. Most of these products are imported from Ghana. In fact, this Researcher, as he was about to leave, was told that he should buy a bag of tiger nuts because 'they are good for your sperm'. A bit bigger than peanuts, they taste like mini-coconuts and you're supposed to chew them, swallowing the liquid. You spit out the fibrous remains afterwards. Ever-mindful of giving his sperm a fighting chance, this Researcher bought himself a bag. Very interesting shop. A bit smelly though.

Ridley Road Market

Ridley Road market is a great place to walk around. With the right attitude, and on a summer's day perhaps, to meander in and out of the market stalls and to absorb the noise and the vibe of the place is a real joy. It bustles, it jostles, it smells, it's noisy, it tests your patience, it tires you out, it's comic - it's even a bit poignant somehow. In short, it's alive.

The mixture of races rubbing shoulders with each other is fascinating: Indian, Chinese, Jamaican, old time Londoners, Turkish, African - they're all here, buying provisions, chatting away in all manner of languages and dialects. And the food on sale is amazing: dates, custard apples, big fat avocados, pomegranites, sharon fruit, mangos, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, puna yams, bags of garlic, thousands of chillis, a whole array of scary blackened smoked fish heads, and even rolls of dried, cured cow skin. One stall sells nothing but fresh eggs of every grade imaginable and the various fishmongers sell between them fresh tuna, coley fillets, live crabs, squid, octopus, salmon, cod, tilapia, skate, red snappers and psychadelic parrot fish. Often reggae sounds blasting out of somebody's portable stereo will provide the soundtrack to your market experience; that and the continual patter from the market traders - 'Come on, now. Have a look!', 'Here we go! Ten lemons, fifty. Fifty pence for yer lemons'.

It's not just food that's on sale, but loads of stalls sell cheap clothes; little coloured ragga-muffin string vests for all young Bob Marley juniors, cheap denim, t-shirts and bargain-priced trainers. There are also stalls selling Indian, African and Turkish fabrics (one stall is the beautifully named 'Fabrik Afrique'). Then you have pots and pans, rolls of wallpaper and imported Jamaican health remedies. There is even a stall selling bibles and religious tapes and videos. Above the stall holder is the sign that reads:

Is your life blessed or cursed? Let God change your curse into a blessing. God will make a way when there seems to be no way.

Dalston's Ridley Road market is not the King's Road²) and that's why it's so earthy. It's got a great vibe. The myriad faces and languages all competing with the sound of the market traders, selling their wares, red-faced, rubbing their hands together to get the warmth back in. Ridley Road market, and by extension, Dalston itself, is a great place. It's busy, colourful, unpretentious, noisy, and real. If you can see beyond its scruffiness, you might well find yourself falling in love with the place.

Getting There

If you are travelling by bus down the Kingsland Road you can catch the 67, 76, 149 or 243 - all of which go to Old Street, Shoreditch or Liverpool Street Station. The same buses go the opposite way so you can aproach Dalston from Old Street or Liverpool Street. Dalston Kingsland railway station is opposite Ridley Road market.