Six Years of St Andrews Shawarma House

A Conversation with Restaurant Owner, Aydin Daj

Afternoon sun splayed across the tables outside the St Andrews Shawarma House when I interviewed founder and owner Aydin Daj. Throughout our conversation, locals and students briefly interrupted to say hello to Daj, who greeted them with a smile and a fist bump. The restaurant opened in December 2019, and in just six years has become a staple of St Andrews, with locals stopping in for a quick lunch and students ending their nights out at the restaurant.

Daj’s experience with food began far before the restaurant opened, back when he still lived in Turkey. To this day he remembers his favourite meal his mother cooked. “Pasta, always pasta,” he said. “When she cooks it, it’s all I eat.”

His fond memories of food provided him with direction after he left school as a child. “I studied until primary school, I was four or five,” Daj said. “My family didn’t have a position where we could study… Since then, I've been in the kitchen.”

When asked about what he learned from his years as a chef, Daj told me, “I know thousands of things, too many to tell you.”

At twenty years old, Daj decided to take his knowledge across the continent to Scotland. While his time in Turkey as a chef taught him many things, he still found he had much to learn upon arrival in Scotland.

“My English was a problem,” Daj explained. “But I learned on the street. I never studied.”

The language barrier was not the only struggle Daj faced. Translating business knowledge from one country to another proved difficult, and his early years in Scotland were marred by failure. “I had two, three businesses in Dundee,” he said. “I burst them. I made a lot of mistakes on those businesses.”

Fortunately, Daj was not alone. His mother, ever faithful in her son’s abilities, found a way to keep funding Daj’s entrepreneurial ideas. 

“My mum, she sold her gold, her Arab gold,” Daj said. “She opened our business for £35,000. Then she helped me, I think it's eight months she helped me.”

To this day, Daj considers the restaurant to be his mother’s. “It’s her shop,” Daj said. “She can do whatever. If she told me to sell the business, I’d sell it straight away, because Mum is very important for me.”

Daj and his mother worked alongside each other with no other help, making recipes that came not from a cookbook, but from family tradition. Despite Daj’s mother moving to Canada once the Shawarma House proved successful, her presence remains in the restaurant’s menu. “It's the same now. Never changed anything,” he said.

Despite early success, Daj’s blooming restaurant was soon put under pressure by the Covid-19 pandemic. “Covid affected me really badly,” he said. “I was really struggling, because of no money, no income. It was bad, really bad.”

Fortunately, the reinstatement of takeaway allowed Daj to make a speedy turnaround. “A restaurant is different,” he said. “At a restaurant, you have to treat it like a baby. Takeaway, you need to be careful, but it has a fast turnover. Not like a restaurant where you're dealing with customers for one hour, maybe two hours. Takeaway is just 10 minutes. The customer is happy, you’re happy? That's it. Finished. Quick money.”

While his path to success may have been rocky, Daj has reached a point of personal pride. “It does make me proud of myself,” he said. “And it means I'm doing something right. Because I bursted two, three businesses before, I had a bad feeling. But now I know I can do it. I believe myself.”

With his growing success, Daj keeps the students of St Andrews in mind. When asked about the best part of St Andrews, Daj’s response was simple: “The students [...] I love the kids,” he said. “They’re crazy. I love them, they’re just cool as f***. Most faces, I can tell. 80 % are my regular customers. Same faces, always. Students come back, they return.”

The love students have for the Shawarma House has shown itself in many ways. While some bring presents to show their appreciation, one group of students took a different approach and dressed up as Daj. “Last year on Halloween, I think it was twenty students?,” he recalled. “They had a fake beard and had a hoodie. I even have a picture.”

The loyalty students have to Daj is reciprocated, and Daj aims to connect his clubs and restaurants so he can provide students with discounts. “All the money I make from the kids I put back into the business,” Daj said. “I’m trying to connect [them] together. I would like to treat them like a family.”

As he told me the story, he smiled. “I love my kids,” he said. “Man, they're really crazy.” Daj’s actual son, Aras Aydin Daj, then joined us, waving a chilli pepper in his father’s face. “When I swear, he puts pepper in my mouth,” Daj told me. “He is training me.”

The presence of his son turned Daj to consider the future. For his son, he looks beyond the restaurant. “He's gonna study,” Daj said. “If he fails, he’s gonna do something else. If he fails again, he already knows the shawarma in the back of his mind. For example, when he's 30 years old, if he has nothing to do, he’ll know, ‘Oh, my dad taught me how to make a shawarma.’ It’ll be a skill on his hand forever.”

As for Daj, the community of St Andrews has ensured a retirement here. He told me, “I feel the same when I go to Turkey as when I'm here. It feels like home now.”

Photo courtesy of Aydin Daj