Down the Hatch: Teddy's celebrates its 60th birthday

Daily Mail, 26 April

It’s Saturday, the first of July, 1950 and a small hatch in a whitewashed wall slides open. A queue has formed on the shaded side of the road opposite Dun Laoghaire’s sea baths. It snakes its way from the People’s Park down to Number One Windsor Terrace. Adults and children, dressed in their weekend best, chatter and count coins. Suddenly, the queue jerks forward as a hand reaches out from the window. It’s holding an ice cream cone, swirled and peaked to perfection, with a crumbly Flake rooted on its slope.
There is a rattle of coppers in a till. Teddy’s – the most famous ice cream parlour in Ireland – has opened for business.
Half a mile down the road, another crowd is queuing in silence. It’s waiting for the mail boat to England. Ireland, still reeling from the Emergency years, is bleak and broke.
The contrast couldn’t be more pronounced. The cheerfulness of Edward ‘Teddy’ Jacob’s shop-front is a show of defiance to the miserable ’50s. It’s a joyful affirmation that, no matter how grim life is, you’ll always find summer queuing at Teddy’s window.
Post-Celtic Tiger, it still is.
Teddy’s is more than just an ice cream shop. It stores memories of water wings and blue skies. Of standing under the fountain in the baths or chasing a beachball at Sandycove. Of sticky ice cream leaking through a cone. It reminds you of a time before mortgages and bills.
Teddy’s red sign is as identifiably Dublin as the Pigeon House’s candy stripes.
From Friday, that sign will also hang in Dundrum shopping centre as Teddy’s expands its little empire (there’s one in Enniskerry). The owners are opening a new parlour and grill to mark the 60th anniversary of Edward Jacob’s entry into the ice cream business.
Edward, although a public figure, guarded his privacy. Even when he passed away in Thailand in February, his death notice didn’t give a date of birth. Just “sadly missed by Austin and many friends.”
“He was never keen on people talking about him. If he was interviewed about the shop, he would say ‘please don’t mention me’,” says current owner, Yasmin Khan.
Edward was raised on Ulverton Road in Dalkey, where the locals Christened him ‘Teddy’, because of his flamboyant, Teddy Boy, dress sense.
He built his landmark shop in the former garden of the last house on Windsor Terrace. As business boomed, Teddy expanded into the house with a gift ‘boutique’ and a café/grill, where couples drank coffee after the Pavilion and the Forum.
The café and boutique – like the cinemas – closed down, but the heart of Teddy’s survived. Even as the emigrants queued up again in the jobless ’80s, customers still queued for Teddy’s comforting brand of nostalgia.
In 1994, he retired to the south of France but, to maintain tradition, he sold Teddy’s to his ice cream supplier, Brian Kahn. South African-born Brian’s late wife had lived beside Teddy’s mother in Dalkey.
Brian’s daughter Yasmin now runs Teddy’s with the same passion that Teddy and her dad brought to it.
“I started working here when I was in school. The shop has always been an important part of my life. When I took over I was told, ‘If it’s not broken don’t fix it’.” It wasn’t broken: she didn’t ‘fix’ it.
When you enter Teddy’s, you step into a ‘reverse Tardis’: it’s smaller than it seems from the outside and ungoverned by time.
The counters are made of dark wood and beneath their glass are clusters of Dairy Milks and jellies. Along the wall is a row of jars filled with childhood favourites: mint humbugs, cough sweets, bon bons, sherbert lemons … I’m drooling.
“We’re going to produce our own apple drops,” says Yasmin. “They will be red and white – Teddy’s trademark colours.”
The sweets are still weighed out by the quarter on Teddy’s original scales and served in paper bags. Remember the taste of paper-clad bull’s eyes?
In the corner, behind a cooler, sits a Dublin legend, Rita Shannon. She’s been working at Teddy’s for over 40 years. She came to fill in for someone who was on holidays and just never left.
“Teddy was a lovely man,” she says. “We were always like one big, happy family. I love it here.” She recalls when Teddy’s would stay open until 2.30am, while people sat chatting on the wall beside the baths. In the winter, when the shop is closed, she still comes to sit and look at the waves.
From her hatch, Rita can see the generations changing. Many middle-aged parents queuing today remember their first childhood sighting of Rita. In your earliest years, she was a disembodied hand that passed cones to your parents. Your rate of growth could be gauged by Teddy’s wall, as each summer you got nearer to the sill of the hatch. Finally, you made eye contact with Rita. You were ‘grown up’.
“We’ve seen people come and go,” she says. “If we don’t see people for a long time we wonder what’s happened to them. You get attached to them. You miss them.”
People may come and go, but widowed Rita won’t ever lack for company.
“She’s like a granny to me,” Yasmin confides, adding that Rita’s even gone on holidays with her and her husband Craig.
She proudly lists some famous names that Rita has served: Bono, Sinead O’Connor, Tubbers – all happy to queue and chat with the locals. “Everyone is equal at Rita’s hatch.”
Yasmin loves her job. “This is the kind of place you could never give up,” she says. Like Bridie, who passed away in 1988. Rita and Yasmin are convinced the shop is haunted by the former ice cream swirler.
“Bridie always worked late into the night. After she died, the machines started playing tricks on us. They turn themselves on at night…”
Teddy’s traditionally opens from St Patrick’s Day until October, although it’s now common to see muffled-up walkers queuing for cones in mid-November. It’s all-weather ice cream.
“On a good Sunday, we can serve 5,000 customers,” she says. “The average is 3,000.” Those impressive figures are reflected on Teddy’s Facebook page. It made 5,000 friends – from South Africa to America – on its first day.
Those friends hadn’t forgotten the Teddy’s taste of Teddy’s ice cream, which is made to a “top secret recipe”. Yasmin is giving nothing away.
I’m handed a cone, the first one I’ve had in years. I bite into it. It’s gorgeous: thick, cool and sweet. Childhood memories race back.
Will the new Dundrum shop sell ‘designer’ ice cream? Will there be Yummy Drummy flavour, I ask.
“It will be plain vanilla and sold from a hatch,” Yasmin says, emphatically. Without any syrup. Tradition must be upheld.
Outside, a businessman crab-walks against the light breeze blowing in from Scotsman’s Bay. His jacket is sheltering a 99. Schoolkids are running along Windsor Terrace, money at the ready. The sun is shining and cloud-shadows skitter across the sea to Howth. There’s timeless, summer-like feeling in the air. The feeling that Tigers and recessions will pass, but Teddy’s will always be here. And so will Rita Shannon, sitting at her hatch, swirling memories for another generation of children.