Is your restaurant halal?

Spectator

3 days ago

Dos Mas Tacos opened recently next to Spitalfields Market, one of London's trendiest and busiest areas. Two beef birria tacos cost £11.50; two mushroom vegano are £10.50; a 'can-o-water' is £2.50.
But look a little closer at their menu, and something jumps out: no pork and no alcohol. You'd expect a carnitas option at a taqueria, and you'd want a Corona with it. You can't get either at Dos Mas Tacos. Huh? Or maybe hmm.
I came across the place on TikTok, via a video of the two founders, Rupert and Charlie Avery, outside their shop. They're well-heeled lads, twins with posh accents. They used to work in the superyacht industry. 'Hey everyone!' one brother says. 'Just to let you guys all know' – in the classic TikTok singsong tone – 'we definitely don't have any pork in our kitchen, as well as no alcohol in the kitchen as well.' They gesture towards the 'comments we've been having'. The other brother then proudly shows the camera their halal butchers' certificate, which is approved by Muslim clerics. 'This is where we buy all of our meat from, so again, just to clarify that as well!'
I read the comments. 'Everyone tag this place and go. Support these guys. W [Win] Birria Tacos,' reads one, which has 6,421 likes. Not everyone is positive. 'No thanks mate – definitely will not be coming back'; 'Defo won't eat here then'; 'Look forward to reading Dos Mas Tacos is in receivership'; 'Another reason to avoid' (2,420 likes).
On the face of it, Dos Mas Tacos's decision is curious. Here are two British chaps serving a typically non-halal cuisine in a country and city where most people do not follow halal. Yet there is clearly a demand for it, driven by social media reviews.
I've been noticing similar stories around London. In 2023, the most popular opening in Soho was Supernova, a French-run joint that served smashburgers. After about a year, it went 'finally halal' and gained even more TikTok traffic. The longest queue I've seen outside a London restaurant was for Swiss Butter in Holborn. The menu didn't seem special. It was just steak frites, but halal.
Last year, the Noodle Inn arrived in Soho, serving northern Chinese cuisine. There were long queues for this too, and it's still immensely popular, but there seems to have been resistance to it not serving halal. An Instagram story from its account last week read: 'FYI Please note: We are not currently halal, but it is something we are actively working towards. Thank you for understanding.' Had Noodle Inn been getting 'comments', too?
Let's try to understand why so many restaurants are going halal. Well, from a commercial point of view, why wouldn't you? Even in 2016, it accounted for 8 per cent of the UK's total food and drink spend. Clearly that has risen since then. Fifteen per cent of London's population is Muslim, a figure which is also growing. And halal customers eat more meat per capita than other people. While Muslims make up 6.5 per cent of Britain's population, they account for 30 per cent of lamb eaten in England alone. Running a restaurant isn't easy these days, so why would you deliberately lose customers by serving food they won't eat? Especially as many customers who aren't Muslim won't even notice if a restaurant is halal.
James Chiavarini, who owns Il Portico and La Palombe in Kensington, tells me: 'If your business model is lowest common denominator, and it's high volume, high turnover, then it makes sense to go halal. Whereas the food that I do, I try to be a little more curated and elevated. I can't do lowest common denominator, I'm crap at it.'
More places than you'd think serve halal meat. Most of London's fried chicken shops – including the popular chains Wingstop and Slim Chickens – are entirely halal. So are a fifth of Nando's branches. As the company's website says: 'Non-halal meat never enters a halal restaurant: even the chicken livers and prego steak rolls are halal!'
Other non-chain examples include Bake Street, a brilliant brunch restaurant in Clapton. It attracts all demographics (including me) with its smashburgers and crème brûlée cookies. Gymkhana in Mayfair, one of only four Indian restaurants in the world with at least two Michelin stars, says on its website that its 'chicken, lamb and goat are halal certified'.
Does all this make you queasy? It certainly has that effect on Rupert Lowe, who said in parliament recently: 'We are all eating halal meat without knowing it. I find that morally repugnant. We should ban non-stun slaughter, we should ban halal slaughter and we should ban kosher slaughter.'
Kosher, incidentally, does not permit pre-stunning, while 88 per cent of halal meat is from pre-stunned animals. However, of the 30 million non-stunned slaughtered animals last year, 27 million were halal and three million were kosher.
Lowe wants a full ban, the favourite national solution to things we don't like. Others prefer labelling, which seems fair. If Boris Johnson imposed calorie counts on restaurant menus, then customers are at least entitled to know if their food is halal.
Let's remember, though, that we don't think rationally or consistently about this sort of stuff: consider the poor piggies gassed for bacon, the non-dairy calves snuffed out in days for their uselessness, the quail necks we snap, the chickens stunned agonisingly slowly in electric water baths. Halal is an easy target, but so much about the way animals live and die in this country, particularly ones bred for our chain restaurants, is grim. Eating less but better meat from restaurants or butchers is an obvious way forward, but then an awful hangover occasionally prescribes a sub-tenner fry-up for all of us. We are flawed etc.
As I read the TikTok comments, I also think this: pressuring a restaurant to conform to your culinary wishes is strange. If it is not halal, you can go elsewhere – particularly in London, where there are 40,000 places to eat out, many of which are exclusively halal. And if a restaurant goes that way for commercial reasons, that also betrays a strange, slightly fearful attitude to hospitality. So here's my advice to restaurants: ignore the comments and do what you want. The customer isn't always right.