Lay of the Land: It’s the ‘lekker’ of the Irish for this town’s new food business

It’s an apt backstory to their selection of sweets and savouries that range from Gallic gateaux and classic snacks such as croque monsieur to South African foods like chakalaka and samosas. And while the latter is Indian in origin, nothing is quite as it seems — for these familiar looking items have unexpected flavours.

“So many nationalities went to South Africa,” Julien explains. “They all added their own twist so the taste is different.” 

The food is not the only surprise, for this cafe isn’t really a cafe, despite the tables and chairs for customers who want to eat in, and not just because the couple don’t have the manpower to provide a proper sit-down service. Most of their trade is takeaway and catering, while their main concern is producing food for retail and the two markets they do at the weekend, which provide most of their income.

This is crucial with the crisis in Ukraine seriously affecting costs. But while the cheerful couple say they put everything they have earned into this business, they add that “really, it is our customers’ money. Their support is how we are here now and we don’t want to cheat them by stopping. We love doing the markets”.

It means working seven days a week, getting up at 5am to commute from their Co Wexford home that they bought just before lockdown, waking an hour earlier at the weekends to prepare for the markets.

But Ashika is used to early starts, as her parents ran a fruit and vegetable wholesale business in South Africa that meant they woke every day at 4am. “My mother had my little brother under the counter in a cot and that’s how he grew up.”

On that note, neither of them knew much about Ireland before they came here, though Ashika used to sing Danny Boy in the school choir as a child. “I never knew where the song came from.” But it was another Daniel that got her heart racing. “My first impression of Ireland was Daniel Day-Lewis, I saw him in a movie and I thought, ‘Oh, wow — if all Irish men are like that!’”

The diplomatic answer might be that she didn’t get the chance to find out, for she fell in love with Julien when they were both working as chefs in Naas, Co Kildare. But they are not just lucky in love, for their experiences here have been overwhelmingly positive. They praise the Irish for being “very open to new things and easy to chat with.”

But more than that, as Julien discovered when he noticed one of their car tyres was flat. Before he found time to fix it, a neighbour knocked on their door to say that he was changing his tyres and was going to look after their flat tyre while he was at it.

“Imagine that. You would not get this anywhere else. I think it’s one of the things with Irish people: they are willing to go towards other people and see if you’re okay.”

Maybe that’s why they chose the ‘Lekker Food Collection’ for their business name: for ‘lekker’ means ‘good’ or ‘pleasant’ in Afrikaans and is also used as a greeting to say you are feeling lekker. What’s more, I looked the word up to check the spelling and discovered that it apparently also means slightly intoxicated, Surely making it the perfect word to describe this couple’s joy at having realised their dream of opening their own place in Ireland.

Perhaps not so much a case of “feeling lucky, punk?” as “feeling lekker, paddy?”