Good service, and good, clean food at affordable prices at Kurdish restaurants in Sweden attract thousands of satisfied clients a month, according to official figures.

Little things, like paying your bill after eating – instead of the Swedish custom of paying first and receiving a ticket for your meal at the lower-end restaurants – add to the reasons why Swedes, Kurds, Arabs, Persians and other lovers of dishes like Kebab and Qozi flock to Kurdish eateries.

“The service is the reason why we come here,” said a Kurdish patron at Stockholm’s Safin restaurant. “I order Qozi when I am very hungry, and kebab when I am not.”

Sarsang, Kurdistan, Safin, Nawroz, Kirkuk and Nergiz are among the better know restaurants in Stockholm.

“Just like custom dictates in Kurdistan, you eat first and then pay,” said Ahmed, a Kurdish patron of a restaurant. “In addition to the good service there is also a homey atmosphere,” he told Rudaw.

“Hot tea, oven bread and greasy Kebabs taste excellent in this cold and foreignness,” said Ahmed, as he tucked into some Kebab.

In Gothenburg, Sweden’s second-largest city which has a large Kurdish population, restaurant-goers say the etiquette and standards are somewhat different.

“Cheating is more common here,” said Ahmed Hama Rahim, a chef at a Gothenburg restaurant. “There is dine and dash by some customers,” he noted.

Many Kurds who reside abroad complain about the restaurants in Gothenburg and London for not keeping up with European sanitary standards. In Stockholm, Cologne and Berlin, the restaurants are better and more considerate of the standards, they say.

“We abide by state standards one hundred percent,” the owner and chef of the Kurdistan Restaurant in Stockholm told Rudaw. “The rules have become more rigid and you cannot avoid them; also abiding by the rules is beneficial for us,” he added.

He said the restaurant serves more than 300 customers every day, considered a large number in a city like Stockholm.

According to data by the Stockholm Tax Agency, a sample of 10 Kurdish restaurants showed they served 20,000 customers a month, who together spend around two million Swedish Kronas (around $300,000).

Khabat Bestani, who works at the employment center in Stockholm, said that Kurdish restaurants employ some 1,000 people, “and this is a good number for a city of two million residents like Stockholm. This shows the success of the businesses.”

But like other businesses, there is a darker side to restaurant ownership.

A source from the Stockholm Tax Agency said that restaurants commonly either report less income in order to avoid taxes, or employ undocumented immigrants who are overworked and underpaid, without the knowledge of the government.

Fatima Baghdadi, an Arab customer in one of the Kurdish restaurants in Stockholm, said, “I come here because the Kurdish food is clean, healthy and cheap.”

Yelena, eating Kurdish food with her Swedish spouse, also likes the food. “Kurdish cuisine is very tasty, but has too many calories,” she complained.

Source: rudaw.net