Jessica Furseth

‘This chicken kebab, that’s the original secret recipe. When my mum started this place, she made a single dish [at a time] and cooked whatever she fancied,’ says Tehreem Riaz. A warm, straight-talking woman, Riaz is the owner of Raavi Kebab, which has been serving Pakistani food on Drummond Street since 1975 – many of the dishes on the menu have been unchanged since then. ‘These are the lamb kebabs, which is a recipe from Lahore that my dad’s friend made him swear on the Holy Qur’an not to share,’ says Riaz. In on the secret is chef Khalid Jamil, a close family friend trained in the kitchen arts by Riaz’s dad, who was one of the first South Asians to come to Drummond Street in the 1960s.  And then there’s the nihari, the lamb shank that takes a day and a half to cook. As Riaz greets a group at the next table, they tell her: ‘We asked a chef we know: ‘‘where’s the best place to eat in London?’’ He told us to come here and have the lamb shank.’ Riaz nods, smiling – she knows it’s the real deal. Riaz is in the business of making people happy: ‘People long for connection, and to eat together. People long for a real story, which is what we have here on Drummond Street.’  Small street, big charisma I’ve told everyone I know about the meal I had at Raavi Kebab. Riaz’s place is unassuming, with its white walls and blue-checked tablecloths, but as Londoners know, that’s sometimes a hallmark of a real gem. I left Drummond Street that day with that rare feeling you get when you’ve disco

We don’t have cathedrals in east London – gasholders are our urban monuments. Sitting on the Regent’s Canal in clear view of Broadway Market, the Bethnal Green structures stretch their lattice frames and iron columns up against the sky. I’ve walked past them so many times but they’re still always a little bigger than I think. The brown frames reflect on the water of the canal, casting a benign shadow on the ever-changing graffiti on the towpath with its narrowboats, flowers, joggers and dog-walkers.  After getting married in Hackney Town Hall many years ago, I ran down to that towpath where the sun was setting through the frames – where better to take a wedding photo than in front of the gasholders? These are the symbols of the London that I love, not Big Ben or St Paul’s. My London is full of personal landmarks among its strange and beautiful urban ruins. Even getting divorced a few years later did nothing to dent my affection for those gasholders, and everything they represent. The Bethnal Green gasholders have been a constant as east London is undergoing rapid change. But in the past few years, a battle has been brewing – will the gasholders be lost? Local campaigners have fought bravely, but the forces of redevelopment have set their sights on Bethnal Green’s beloved landmarks, threatening to change the landscape of east London for good.   The beautifully defiant  The gasholders are key to east London’s industrial heritage. The smaller structure, No 2, was built in 1866 a