London is greyer without Gaby Elyahou
A tribute to a man with a remarkable twinkle who ran one of Soho's most popular delis
Friday, 17th March 2023 — By Sara Nathan
NOW we are never going to know whether Gaby Elyahou, who died on Sunday last week, really did introduce both felafel and the cappuccino machine to London in the “swinging sixties”.
Gaby always claimed – with his remarkable twinkle – that London owed both to his arrival as an Iraqi refugee via Israel about 60 years ago.
For decades Gaby ran Gaby’s Deli in Charing Cross Road, just next to Wyndham’s Theatre.
He supplied the best falafel, hummus and salt beef to an extraordinary range of customers.
Creative people, including actors and writers, popped in between rehearsal and show or after the matinée.
Their audiences, of course, flocked in and then there were the politicos and demonstrators, gathering to fuel-up before the possibility of being “kettled” during a demonstration in Trafalgar Square or even Parliament Square.
Local office workers came too for his amazing salad bar and latkes.
Gaby welcomed them all, but his walls – with all their signed posters – displayed his loyalty to London’s theatre, of which he was the centre and heart.
The deli flourished until 2011 when the landlord, the Marquess of Salisbury, decided to close him down in order, his minions said, to redevelop and modernise the site.
Gaby’s hungry customers were horrified and started the “Save Gaby’s Deli” campaign.
It involved an astonishing amount of media coverage from The Evening Standard to The Sun, The Observer, and everything in between.
Broadcasters too.
And it was an early victory for organising on social media, gathering support via Facebook and Twitter.
Highlights of the campaign were the Christmas cards (designed by the The Jewish Chronicle’s cartoonist) which Gaby’s cross customers sent in their thousands to the marquess.
Also Cabaret Falafel which brought performers, including Henry Goodman and The Yehudi Menuhin School, to raise the profile of the campaign… and practically the roof.
In the end the marquess caved under the pressure and the deli stayed open for another six years, finally closing in October 2018, when Gaby had just got too old – in his early 80s – to do it any more, and the marquess wouldn’t let anyone else negotiate to take over.
The site has been a tourist tat shop ever since – no sign of anything to enhance the area. Maybe the deli wouldn’t have survived the Covid-19 pandemic anyhow.
Who knows?
But its customers still miss it, and Gaby, as they told the world so this week, when they heard of his death…
* “I was a regular in the deli from the early 1980s when a student, and every trip into town involved Gaby’s. All trips up to London since the 1990s saw me making
for this deli oasis. I introduced my son to the place and he became a regular. London is much diminished by the loss of Gaby and the deli.”
* “I discovered Gaby’s in my first week in London and ate there for more than 30 years. There was no other place like it in central London and I mourn its loss every time I’m in the area.”
* “My favourite meal anywhere, ever, is still a Gaby’s falafel with a pot of that magical hot sauce.”
* “So many salt beef sandwiches were eaten with red wine at Gaby’s while laughing, crying, debating or just chilling with good friends. Heartbroken when Gaby’s closed.”
One of the campaign organisers, Eleanor Lloyd, now president of the Society of London Theatre, said: “I still miss Gaby’s every working day of my life.
“My office overlooks the site and reminds me what an extraordinary place it was.
“The campaign was a highlight and a victory. London is greyer without Gaby and Gaby’s Deli.”
Sara Nathan OBE is a former broadcast journalist who edited Channel 4 News.
She is a co-founder of Refugees at Home and ran the successful campaign to save Gaby’s Deli from closure in 2012.
